


A Matter of Perspective

by movementinthedark



Series: Ad Astra [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - International Space Station, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Space, Astronauts AU, Eventual Romance, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Slow Burn, alternate universe - NASA, wait
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-04 23:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/movementinthedark/pseuds/movementinthedark
Summary: Some days, Ben Solo wonders why he ever followed his parents into their line of work. With the Administrator of NASA for a mother and a retired, accomplished astronaut for a father, Ben has spent most of his life - and career - trying to escape his parents' shadow.Today, sitting on top of the 300 ton rocket that will launch him to his first ever stay on the International Space Station, is not one of those days.Ben is determined to learn everything he can, have an amazing experience, and cement his place as one of NASA’s finest. What he doesn’t expect is to find a mentor, and a friend, in one of ESA’s most highly respected astronauts, ISS Commander Armitage Hux.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a few months, and I'm excited to finally begin posting it! I've long been a NASA fangirl, and it's been really fun to throw our favorite First Order duo into this AU. I hope it's an enjoyable read even for those who may not be as interested in spaceflight as I am! This fic is just about finished, and I will be posting 1-2 chapters per week.
> 
> A couple of notes on accuracy: 
> 
> All of the main characters are, to a greater or lesser extent, older than they are in canon, and some of their relative ages have also been adjusted.
> 
> I have done a lot of research for this fic, but I am by no means an expert on human spaceflight or the International Space Station. I apologize in advance for any errors or inconsistencies. I have altered details in a few places in order to better suit the story, the most notable being:
> 
> -While the Russians have played an enormous role in the International Space Station, there are no Russian astronauts in this fic. I really wanted to use canon characters as much as possible, and I felt that trying to make any of them Russian would only result in a caricature, which seemed best avoided.
> 
> -Currently the Russian Soyuz is the only means for astronauts to reach the ISS, but - per the item above - I’ve set the launch and re-entry sites in/off the coast of the United States. We’re just envisioning a future (not so far off, with Boeing and SpaceX developing spacecraft to ferry humans!) where the US is once again launching astronauts from its own soil. I have, however, largely modeled the spacecraft in the fic after the Soyuz, as there aren’t any accounts of what it feels like to fly in the Boeing or SpaceX vehicles (yet).
> 
> For research, I primarily relied on a myriad of amazing videos from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), as well as two books - Chris Hadfield’s “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth” and Tim Peake’s “Ask An Astronaut”. Both well worth a read if you’re interested in human spaceflight!

**_Day Zero_ **

Ben Solo was uncomfortably warm.

It was just before eight in the morning, and he was currently wedged into a spacecraft, sitting atop a 300 ton rocket on a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Wedged was the appropriate term: the capsule was tiny, and Ben was secured to his seat within an inch of his life. He was only an inch or so shy of the maximum height permitted for this particular vehicle and, while he normally appreciated his six feet and two inches, he was currently a tad envious of his companions’ shorter statures. His knees were practically against his chest, his long legs tightly bent.

It was hot inside his spacesuit. The helmet was closed and locked, and the suit securely fastened around him; it had passed its earlier leak checks with flying colors. It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, apart from the current temperature, but Ben had been wearing it for nearly four hours, with more than that left to go.

He reviewed the launch checklist again, despite having it memorized, reminding himself of the remaining items. Over his headset, he could hear the console checks taking place at Mission Control in Houston, the familiar and reassuring responses of “go flight” as each console was called. The clock was in plain view, counting down to liftoff in large, bold numbers. Only a few minutes now.

Ben was going to space today.

He wasn’t nervous, although he certainly had an awareness of the incredible risk he was taking. This was the most dangerous thing he had ever done. More dangerous than clocking 90 mph on a Texas backroad at the age of sixteen, and even potentially more dangerous than spending 12 consecutive days underwater on a NASA expedition two and a half years earlier. His lack of nerves was largely owed to the incredible teams at NASA, and training centers at other space agencies, for the thorough preparation he’d received for this very moment and everything that would come after it.

It was also owed in no small part to the two people currently beside him. Poe Dameron, to Ben’s right in the center seat, was the Commander of this tiny Falcon spacecraft. An experienced astronaut who had spent five months aboard the International Space Station on a prior mission, Poe would become Commander of the ISS in three months time, when they became prime crew for Expedition 63. Ben had met the older man early on during his astronaut training and had liked him immediately. He could think of no one he’d rather fly with on this mission. On Poe’s other side was Rey Kenobi of the European Space Agency. Ben hadn’t known her very well prior to beginning their mission training, but that had changed after six months next to each other in a simulator. Like Ben, she was a rookie, but she effortlessly exhibited the kind of competent dependability that he wanted in a crewmate.

So it wasn’t nerves he was feeling, as the clock hit thirty seconds and a rumbling around them indicated the lighting of the outer engines. It was elation. He was going to space. _Finally_.

Five seconds.

“Engines at full thrust.” That was Mission Control, a bit harder to hear now over the noise.

The clock had fully counted down, and a voice in his earpiece confirmed “Liftoff”. It was just as well, for the teeth-rattling vibration made it hard for Ben to tell if they were actually moving in a specific direction. The windows were of no help, they were currently covered.

By one minute in, Ben was definitely aware of their acceleration, which was pushing him back into his seat with increasing force. His eyes constantly tracked the numerous displays before him, looking for any sign of anomaly. He knew Poe and Rey were doing the same. Perhaps his most critical job in these minutes was fast reaction time in case of emergency. Should something go wrong and the need arise to force-separate their capsule from, say, a malfunctioning rocket, Ben was the only one who could reach the necessary buttons. He’d have perhaps five seconds to execute the command, so he couldn’t afford to let his attention slip, however unlikely he hoped that outcome to be.

The g-loading had significantly increased, his chest rather being flattened into the seat behind him, and Ben employed the breathing techniques he’d been taught in training. Despite the pressure, the acceleration felt _amazing_. Then, a big jolt as the first-stage engines cut off and exploded off the vehicle, jettisoning the now-empty fuel tanks. Ben was thrown forward, then slammed back again. The sensation felt like falling, even though he knew they were still shooting upwards into space.

The covering over the top of their spacecraft, to protect it from the atmosphere, had also been jettisoned. Ben glanced up to the now uncovered windows, a thrill shooting through him at his first glimpse of black sky. The g-load had eased off a bit, and he found he could lift an arm without quite so much effort. At least until the second-stage engines separated, and he was slammed back into his seat even harder than before.

By now, the rocket was nearly horizontal. And it wasn’t much longer until the engines cut off, and it was disconcertingly quiet, followed by one final jolt as the Falcon separated from the rocket.

“Orbital insertion confirmed.” Poe’s voice came through the earpiece, seemingly loud without the backdrop of the engines, as all three of them studied the displays. The clock read eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

“Copy that, Falcon,” replied the Capcom back at Mission Control.

It had worked. They were _on orbit_.

Ben glanced at Poe. It was a bit difficult to see the other man’s expression through his helmet, but Ben could tell he was grinning. Ben grinned back. Poe let go of his checklist, and it drifted up and away from his hand before he caught it again. Ben let his own go, making sure it didn’t get out of reach, feeling another thrill at watching it float in front of him.

They were in space.

 

\------------

 

Ben’s first glimpse of the International Space Station was of a small, bright spot in the distance. He might have mistaken it for a star, but as they drew nearer he began to make out the various modules and massive solar arrays. The station was enormous. Ben knew, objectively speaking, that it was the size of a football field, with the living space of a five bedroom house, but that hadn’t quite prepared him for the sight as they approached in their tiny spacecraft.

They were amongst the solar arrays now, venturing into the belly of the beast, as it were. Poe maintained a running narration as they slowly moved closer to their designated docking port. The three astronauts closely watched the display showing the docking camera, along with information about distance and angle; while docking was automated, they’d need to intervene quickly should anything go wrong.

Fortunately, all seemed to be progressing according to plan. It had been six and a half hours and four orbits of earth since launch, and they were only inches away now.

“Standby for contact.”

A slight bump as the docking probe connected with the port, the Falcon’s thrusters helping to push it securely into place.

“Contact confirmed. Capture confirmed.”

Ben felt a current of relief as the probe retracted, pulling the two vehicles tightly together. Next the hooks would close to hold their spacecraft securely to the ISS, where it would remain for the next six months. They were _here_.

“Falcon, Station. Welcome to the ISS!” A cheerful voice rang out over the communications link, and all three of them grinned.

“Thanks, Station. We’re thrilled to be here.” Poe’s tone held all of the elation that Ben felt. “How’re you doing, Phas?”

“Better now that you’ve arrived,” she confirmed with a chuckle. “And not only because of the small box of fresh fruit that I know is in there somewhere.”

They all shared a laugh at that. Fresh fruit was a hot - and rare - commodity on station. Ben knew Phasma, the owner of the spirited voice on the other end of the com, fairly well. She’d been in Poe’s astronaut class at NASA, beginning their training four years before Ben had arrived. They’d overlapped on various assignments over the years, in the Astronaut Office and in Mission Control. She was somewhat legendary at Johnson Space Center in Houston for going solely by her surname; Ben honestly wasn’t sure what her first name was.

“Then let’s do these pressure checks so we can get you that fruit,” Poe quipped.

“Copy that,” Phasma affirmed. “Ready when you are.”

They were _nearly_ on station now, with their three fellow astronauts, a warm meal, and - most critically - a toilet, just on the other side of the sealed hatch. Ben hadn’t been to the bathroom since donning his spacesuit ten hours earlier. He, like Poe and Rey, was wearing an adult diaper just in case, but he hadn’t yet used it and was hoping to keep it that way. There was a toilet of sorts on their spacecraft, but it paled in comparison to the ISS facilities, and there had been no time to get out of their spacesuits to use it. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, either, so food was also high on the list.

But _nearly_ wasn’t _completely_ and, in all likelihood, they had another two hours to go before the hatch could be opened. Several important items had to be completed first - ensuring an intact seal on the spacecraft, pressurizing the docking port, and getting the Falcon into the hibernation mode it would remain in until they powered it back up to go home. All critical steps, and no amount of exhaustion, hunger or bladder pressure could distract them from the tasks at hand.

As they reached the final few items in their docking checklists, they took turns in finally getting out of their spacesuits. Ben went last, as his position in the capsule would make it near impossible for him to squeeze past the others while they were all fully suited. There was a reason he’d been first inside prior to launch.

“Go slow,” Poe advised him, as Rey drifted back down towards her seat, freshly changed. “Don’t move your head too fast.”

Ben wrestled himself out of his harness and immediately floated upwards. The sensation was strange and a little disorienting. He turned to make his way up to the habitation module, where there was more room, the motion making his head spin and his stomach flip over.

“Whoa, you weren’t kidding.”

“I feel fine,” Rey chimed in.

Poe snorted. “And Rey apparently has a stomach made of iron.”

Ben shot the woman in question a (mostly) good-natured glare, and then - very cautiously - continued his path up into the habitation module.

 

\------------

 

At long last, they were all three dressed in their blue flightsuits, and Poe was carefully opening the hatch. Squeezing past the opened hatch out of the spacecraft was an ordeal in and of itself, at least for someone of Ben’s size. And then he saw the narrow corridor of the Rassvet module and Phasma’s beaming face just before she engulfed him in a hug. They’d been speaking for most of the past two hours, over com, but finally seeing her was a bit of a relief.

Just past her, the corridor was crowded with Poe and Rey, who were exchanging greetings with the other two astronauts on station, Hux and Finn. Ben managed to float over to join them, with a little help from Phasma and a conveniently placed handrail, and exchanged handshakes and hellos with the latter two. Handshakes in microgravity were strange, he immediately realized: your hand stayed mostly still, while the rest of your body moved up and down. Ben supposed it was the first of many mundane things to become fascinating while in space. Finn held a camera - that would explain the flashing lights as Ben had first emerged from the Falcon. 

Ben had met both men before, but he didn’t know either of them as well as he knew Phasma. Finn was in Rey’s class at ESA; they’d joined the space program a year after Ben and had both trained for spacewalks at JSC while he’d been certifying as Capcom. They hadn’t overlapped much for work purposes at that time, but had chatted often enough in the Astronaut Office or the cafeteria for him to get to know them a little bit. Of course, he’d come to know Rey much better once they were assigned to a mission together.

He knew Hux probably least of all, although they’d crossed paths at JSC or the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne a few times. They’d certainly passed in the hallways and exchanged pleasantries, but their respective work schedules had rarely seemed to overlap. Hux had joined the European Astronaut Corps the same year that Poe and Phasma had begun at NASA; he’d launched on his first ISS mission before Ben was six months into training.

Hux was the current Commander of the ISS and of Expedition 62, which had begun two weeks prior with the departure of the previous crew. The newly arrived trio were to join Phasma and Finn as Flight Engineers under his command for the next three months, at which point Poe would take over for Expedition 63, and Hux, Phasma and Finn would return to earth.

“Photo op!” Finn called, waving the camera.

“In here?” Ben found himself asking, looking around the narrow space.

“It _is_ tradition,” Hux told him, with a smirk.

Ben hadn’t quite figured out how to move in microgravity, although the fact that he could easily reach both walls at once made it a bit easier. From the looks of it, both Rey and Poe - even with his prior experience - were struggling, too. All in all, it took a bit of doing to arrange themselves suitably, while Finn tried to get a good angle with the camera.

“Perfect,” Finn asserted, reviewing his snapped photos.

 

\------------

 

By eleven-thirty, Ben was exhausted. Of course, he was on Coordinated Universal Time now and thus five hours ahead of the time zone he’d left earth from. But never mind that it was only six-thirty in the evening in Florida. He had been awake since two AM, had essentially worked for thirteen consecutive hours, much of it in high-stress conditions, and - oh yeah. He’d launched to space.

Following the photo op, the now six-person ISS crew had vacated the Rassvet module single-file - the only way to get anywhere in that narrow corridor - and had convened in the Russian Service Module for a press conference. The time limitations on video communication with earth meant it had to happen _right then_ , with no time to get a bit oriented first. Still, it had been nice to hear their family members’ voices, those who had traveled to Florida for launch. Han was there, Leia having been too busy with work in D.C. to get away. Rey’s parents, who had traveled all the way from their home in France to see their daughter’s first launch. Poe’s seven-year-old daughter stole the show, demanding a weightless somersault from her father. He complied, despite turning a bit green in the process.

When the press conference finished, they were finally - _finally_ \- able to pee. The space toilet was a mildly complicated process, at least on first use and while still adjusting to functioning in microgravity. Ben was absolutely determined to not be _that_ astronaut that made a - quite literal - mess out of everything. After that, they’d had a quick meal - the existing crew had already eaten, but took advantage of the fresh fruit delivery while the newly arrived had some dinner. Then Hux took them through some safety protocols; all things Ben had learned front to back and back to front in training, but important to review now that they were actually on station.

By the time they’d finished, it was eleven-thirty local time, and they were all ready to crash. Ben made his way to his appointed sleep station to get settled in and get some rest. Thanks to the 3-D simulations back at JSC, his knowledge of the ISS layout was pretty good. What the sims couldn’t completely account for was the disorientation of zero-g, how if you only flipped yourself upside down, your entire frame of reference changed while your body was still completely convinced it was facing up. Or that was the idea, anyway. At the moment, Ben was doing his best to avoid any flipping upside down and the accompanying, ever-hovering, dizziness and nausea.

He’d only just reached his sleep station when a wave of dizziness caused him to stop and hold on to the handrail as he waited for it to pass. He’d been moving slowly, too; he was a clumsy mess at the moment and keeping track of his long limbs was difficult enough when he was only floating in place.

“Dizzy?”

Ben cracked an eye open to find Hux peering down at him from his own sleep station. At their respective orientations, it kind of looked like the other man’s upper body was emerging from the wall.

This was all a bit weird.

Ben managed a wry grin. “What gave me away?”

Hux smirked. “You’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

Ben suppressed the groan. “Remind me not to move until then.” He watched with a tiny bit of envy as Hux ducked back into his berth and deftly maneuvered himself lengthwise. He thought they were nearly the same height, although Hux was smaller of frame, but it was a bit difficult to tell for certain when they were both floating. He thought he could probably learn a few things from watching how Hux and Phasma, who was even taller, negotiated their lanky frames through the narrow passageways of the station.

Gritting his teeth, he opened the door to his sleep station and swung himself inside.

It was a cozy space, about the size of a phone booth. His two laptops - one for work and one for personal use - were mounted on one side. He tethered his sleeping bag to the wall opposite, using the foot strap near the floor to keep himself steady while he worked. Utilizing the elastic straps on the walls, and the ever-present velcro, he secured a few necessary items: some clothes and toiletries, a book. Hanging the few photos and other small personal effects he’d brought would have to wait until he was less fatigued.

Ben moved to fully close his door, taking a moment to appreciate his surroundings. Rey was just pulling herself into her sleep station, opposite his, and Ben watched as Poe passed overhead, headed for his own. Poe and Hux’s berths were starboard and port, respectively, at right angles to Ben’s own. Rey’s was the overhead, and Ben’s was in the deck. Once inside, with no gravity to tell him which way was up, he’d never have known he was sleeping in the floor. Phasma and Finn were quartered in the Zvezda module, where they’d held their earlier press conference and where there were two additional sleep stations.

With the door shut, his sleep station was the quietest place Ben had been on the ISS. Still, he knew he’d be glad for the earplugs he’d packed, at Poe’s advice; the absolutely necessary ventilation system in his berth gave off a constant hum. Ben struggled a bit to change in the small space, awkwardly bouncing off the walls, but finally managed to don first pajamas and then his sleeping bag. He flicked off the light, nestled down into his sleeping bag, and…floated.

_Floated_.

Despite his exhaustion, his body wasn’t quite getting the memo that it was time to sleep, absent the customary procedure of lying down and putting his head on a pillow. His arms, sticking out of the sleeping bag’s armholes, were floating in front of him, zombie-esque. He tried pulling them into the sleeping bag, folding them against his front, and that seemed marginally better. He closed his eyes and waited, assuming he’d eventually give in to the fatigue.

And he did.

 

**\------------**

 

He awoke, sooner than he preferred, to his watch alarm and a general sense of disorientation. It took him a few seconds to remember the events of yesterday and where he _was_. The realization was enough to wake him fully, although he felt the lingering effects of the prior long day and jet lag, mixed with a healthy dose of continued nausea.

He emerged from his sleep station at the same time as Rey, who looked a shade or two paler than yesterday.

“I’m not feeling so good,” she confessed, cautiously floating down towards Ben.

“Finally caught up to you, huh?” He quipped, and she glared. “Have you taken anti-nausea meds?”

She started to shake her head, then clearly thought better of it. “Not yet.”

“Do that first,” he advised. “They help. And, if it makes you feel any better, I still feel terrible.”

Rey chuckled, as they slowly made their way through the hatch into Destiny, the US lab. “We can suffer together.”

“Who’s suffering?” That was Finn, who was floating near the ceiling, adding water from the dispenser to what appeared to be a foil packet.

“Just lamenting our inner ears’ slow adaptation,” Rey told him.

“Oh, yeah, it’s terrible, isn’t it?” Finn agreed. “But, listen, you’ve not even been on station for twelve hours. You’ll adjust soon enough.” His smile was infectious as he held out the packet. “Coffee?”

And just like that, their first day on the ISS had begun.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Day Seven_ **

One of the most important parts of the astronauts’ work on the ISS was physiological experiments, with themselves as the subjects. Biomedical data and samples collected on station would improve understanding of the impact of spaceflight on the human body, as well as contribute to important research benefiting patients back on earth. Well-versed in the experiments he’d be participating in before he’d ever left the ground, Ben wasn’t at all surprised to find a blood draw on his schedule for his seventh day on station. The daily itineraries were determined by Mission Control, sent to the astronauts overnight, and reviewed at their Daily Planning Conference first thing each morning. Their workday was extremely regimented, planned down to five minute increments. Ben might once have found it stifling, but - after six and a half years in the space program - he’d grown used to operating on someone else’s carefully engineered schedule.

Alone in Columbus, the European lab and home to many of the physiological experiments, Ben was so focused on getting all of the necessary equipment in order that he forgot to pay attention to securing himself. He glanced up to find that he was floating in the middle of the module, out of reach of any surface. He awkwardly kicked his legs, two blood tubes in one hand and a packet of gauze in the other, trying to propel himself closer to something to hold on to. A few moments of vaguely swimming like motions seemed to do the trick, and he had only just hooked his feet under a foothold when Hux floated through the hatch, looking rather like he’d been moving around in microgravity his entire life.

Ben internally sighed with relief. While he was still most decidedly a rookie and prone to awkward weightless moments, he didn’t particularly want any of his crewmates coming upon him flailing around in desperation.

With a succinct greeting, Hux turned his attention to an experiment, and Ben resumed his focus on the task at hand. In his brief encounters with the other man prior to the mission, Ben had thought Hux a bit standoffish. After living together on station for a week, however, he found that his opinion was rapidly changing. While not the most outgoing member of the crew, Hux had a sharp mind and a quick, exceedingly dry, wit, both qualities Ben appreciated. He was also the most experienced astronaut currently on station, although he certainly hadn’t said as much.

Ben had drawn his own blood before, more than once, but this was the first time he’d attempted it in zero-g. He had all of the items carefully secured to the wall, and he managed to get the tourniquet on and his arm cleaned with no trouble. Inserting the needle was another matter. He was moving, just a bit, despite the footholds, and any adjustment to his grip on the needle nearly sent it floating off out of reach. He struggled for a solid minute, before glancing up to find Hux watching him, the tiniest bit of sympathy mixed with amusement evident in the Brit’s expression.

“Would you like a hand?”

Ben almost said no. He really ought to be able to do this himself. But the alternative to help was Hux watching him struggle for another few minutes, and Ben would just as soon get this done. “Sure, thanks. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.” Hux floated over, securing himself next to Ben via foothold. He took the offered needle, while Ben steadied his arm with his now free hand.

Ben had zero qualms about letting Hux stick a needle into his arm. His numerous medical evaluations at NASA - by far the most invasive he’d ever received - had pretty much inured him to being poked and prodded by relative strangers. Besides, he knew that Hux was one of their Crew Medical Officers. That meant he’d had considerably more medical training than Ben, who felt it safe to assume that Hux would be an entirely competent phlebotomist.

He was. Ben barely even felt the needle go in.

“How many tubes?”

“Just two,” Ben affirmed, handing one over. “Normally, I can do this no problem,” he felt the need to add, as Hux secured the tube to the end of the needle apparatus. “But, _normally_ , the needle isn’t trying to float away.”

Hux’s lips quirked upwards in a tiny smile. They watched the tube fill with blood, and then Hux swapped it out for the second one. Ben took the first tube and carefully secured it to the wall. 

“Microgravity presents new challenges to doing just about everything,” Hux agreed. “You’ll get the hang of it.”

Once the second tube was filled, Hux passed it over. His hands were cool and gentle against Ben’s skin as he removed the needle. Ben pressed some gauze to the tiny wound.

“Thanks.”

“It’s no trouble.” Hux disposed of the needle and drifted back to his experiment. “Just holler if you need a hand with it again.”

After cleaning himself up, Ben set a timer for the required time the tubes of blood needed to coagulate - still velcroed to the wall of the module - before he could do anything further with them. He retrieved his partially full packet of coffee from where he’d left it, also attached to the wall, and turned his attention to his iPad, mentally planning ahead for his next couple of tasks. The “big red line” on the screen told him that he was just ahead of schedule. Hux was towards the other end of the module, fully focused on one of the experiments.

In day to day life on station, an ISS Commander’s role was hardly distinguishable from that of the rest of the crew. Hux ran experiments, performed basic maintenance and was assigned to a cleaning rotation, just like everyone else. Of course, he was ultimately responsible for the well-being of both crew and spacecraft, and would have unilateral authority in the event of any emergency, but - with any luck - such a situation would never occur.

Hux, like Poe and Phasma, had been a military pilot. Ben had idly wondered if coming from that background had made it easier for them to adapt to the rigid schedules of spaceflight, just as he’d wondered what it might be like to serve under a commander who was very used to giving orders. He’d heard stories of prior astronauts who had been a bit heavy-handed in their leadership style, although the long-duration missions aboard the ISS certainly necessitated crew members who were good with interpersonal relations. As someone who had always had trouble with authority and had never for a split second considered military service, Ben had been a bit relieved to find that all of his military crewmates were extraordinarily easy to work with.

The only real evidence of Hux’s military background was his appearance. Straight posture. Neatly slicked back hair - impressive in microgravity, where everything tended to float. An apparent propensity for wearing polos - what passed for dressy clothing on station - all of the time. Ben was personally quite happy to live in t-shirts unless he was doing a press conference or some other kind of public appearance. He’d taken to wearing his own longer hair pulled back, as it otherwise drifted up around his head like a small dark cloud. 

There was also an impeccable precision to everything Hux did, though some of that was definitely the result of astronaut training. Well, for Ben anyway. It was entirely possible the Brit had come hardwired that way.

His watch alarm beeped, alerting him that sufficient time had passed for the blood to coagulate. Next it would go into the centrifuge, and then into the MELFI, the freezer for biological samples. Eventually, it would make its way back to earth, on one or another returning flight. It was quite a procedure, just to get two small tubes of his blood back down to the planet. Although, by the time he returned home, he’d have donated far more than two tubes of his blood for science!

 

\------------

 

“Happy Friday!” Phasma greeted Ben cheerfully as he floated through the hatch from Harmony into Destiny. After a week on station, moving while weightless was becoming more familiar, but he still had to pay careful attention to avoid crashing into anything. Or anyone. He’d had just enough time to change clothes and wash up after the required daily workout, his last scheduled task of the day, before the 7 PM end of day call with the worldwide Mission Control centers.

“You too,” he told her, as Hux and Poe emerged from the Russian segment, where they’d been working for the afternoon, floating through Unity to join their colleagues in the US lab. Trailing just behind them was an Astrobee robot, a relatively new technology that had been delivered to the station earlier that year. This particular model, a floating orange and white cube affectionately known as BB-8, was tasked with performing routine system checks and helping to keep track of tools and items on board. Reaching Destiny and its charging port, BB-8 plugged in and powered down to standby mode.

Finn was next to arrive, having returned to his sleep station to change after his own workout, scheduled at the same time as Ben’s. Rey suddenly materialized at Ben’s shoulder; she would have come from either Kibo or Columbus, the Japanese and European labs that were attached to Harmony’s starboard and port.

Hux went to the com, and they all gathered round. “Houston, Station.”

“Good evening, Station,” came the reply from the Capcom currently on console at JSC. It was only one in the afternoon in Houston, but everyone in communication with the astronauts tended to talk as though they were on ISS time, to keep things simpler. The 7 PM call was a bit less ideal for their colleagues at Japan’s Mission Control, for whom it was extremely early in the morning, but everyone in any space program was accustomed to working weird hours. Also on the line were ESA’s Columbus Control Centre in Munich, Russia’s Mission Control in Moscow, and a second US facility in Alabama. The call was relatively brief, a quick round of status updates from each location on earth, as well as the astronauts on station.

That done, it was time for dinner, and Ben was absolutely starving. He was looking forward to his first Friday night dinner on station, a ritual the Expedition 62 crew had proposed shortly after the newcomers’ arrival. While Saturday wasn’t a day off on the ISS - cleaning the station and participating in education-related activities would be on the docket for tomorrow - Friday still represented the end of the regular work week and its particularly grueling schedule of activities. As such, the crew would gather in Unity to share the Friday evening meal, something they didn’t always do the rest of the week.

There was a bit of commotion as six astronauts made their way back through the hatch into Unity, turning their attention from the day’s work to food preparation and relaxed conversation. Finn disappeared into the Russian segment to retrieve some food items stored there. Hux pulled the dining table down from the wall; instead of place settings, it was covered with velcro, possibly the most essential item on station.

“Hmm,” Rey murmured, pulling open one of the food storage containers mounted on the wall. “What am I having for dinner?”

Ben peered over her head at the arranged packets of food, reaching past her to pull out the components of his meal. He freed a packet of potatoes with a bit more force than necessary and promptly lost his grip on it. He turned to watch it sail over his shoulder and into Phasma’s outstretched hand.

“Seriously, Kylo?” She raised an eyebrow. “I know it’s been a long week, but do you really have to throw your food at me?”

“Sorry.” He offered a sheepish grin, and she burst out laughing. “Sometimes I forget that gravity isn’t a thing.”

She pushed the packet back through the air towards him, still chuckling. Rey shook her head at him with a grin, moving to place one of her items in the food warmer. Poe ducked back into the module from Destiny, where he’d been rehydrating part of his own dinner via the water dispenser.

“What’d I miss?”

“Just me being clumsy,” Ben retorted.

“Oh, so nothing unusual then,” Poe quipped, to general laughter. Ben resisted the temptation to throw the potatoes again, this time quite deliberately aimed.

 

\------------

 

They gathered, floating, their food containers secured to the table between them. Ben had found that he naturally adopted a half-sitting, half-standing pose, with his body slightly bent. It was beginning to feel more normal, but he still had to make sure to secure himself with a foothold. The previous day, he’d spotted Hux and Phasma casually drifting across a module while caught up in a discussion; Ben was nowhere near that level of ease of mobility. _Yet_.

He opened up his pouch of barbecued chicken and took a bite. Space food was actually surprisingly good.

“Oh seriously?” Rey’s exclamation drew everyone’s attention. She was clutching a foil pouch in one hand and glancing around in mild annoyance. “Where’d my fork go?”

That got a round of laughter. Rey tried to scowl, but ended up laughing, too. 

“It was right…here!” She protested, waving at the empty space next to her.

“You can’t turn your back on floating objects,” Poe teased. “They have a habit of being carried off by air currents.”

“It’ll turn up stuck to an intake duct in a week or two,” Hux told her, with a smirk. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“To bad BB-8 only inventories tools,” Phasma joked. “And not forks.” One of the robot’s primary functions was to verify the location of tools on station via its scanner, saving the astronauts from wasting valuable time searching for things.

Rey shook her head with exasperation, going to retrieve another utensil. “Such a rookie mistake.”

“Did you not see me practically throwing a packet of potatoes across the module ten minutes ago?” Ben reminded her.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of things I lost my first week here,” Finn told them both sympathetically. “Just ask Hux and Phasma.”

The look exchanged by his two crewmates affirmed his statement and set everyone off laughing again. Once he could safely chew and swallow, Ben took another forkful of chicken, relishing in the camaraderie of the group. In his youth, he’d never been exactly what you would call a team player. He knew he wouldn’t be on station right now if NASA hadn’t deemed him perfectly capable of living for six months in close quarters with five other people, but he was pleasantly surprised to realize how much he was enjoying it. Being with a group like this, part of a _team_ , was something he’d never even wanted before becoming an astronaut.

Across the table, Poe and Phasma were using their drink pouches to create floating bubbles of water, before catching them in their mouths. Ben let his own potato-laden fork go, watching it hover in the air right in front of him.

Yeah, he was finding himself pretty happy to be a part of this crew.

 

\------------

 

**_Day Thirteen_ **

The next Thursday evening, with some time to kill after dinner and before bed, Ben found himself in the Cupola.

The Cupola was attached to Tranquility, in the floor between the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device and the toilet. He’d had to dive down to enter it, but then - suddenly - his orientation changed and he was looking up at earth. With windows on all of its six sides and in the top, it had by far the best views on station.

Ben just floated for a moment, drinking in the spectacular sight of the planet. During the day, earth was an expanse of blue, with notable geological formations, while at night it was a mix of bright city lights and dark ocean. The ISS orbited earth sixteen times per day, resulting in a sunrise approximately every 90 minutes, so there was plenty of opportunity to view earth in both daylight and nighttime. It was currently dark, but they’d be experiencing another sunrise before too long. Ben had found he’d adapted to it fairly readily, as long as he didn’t look outside right before bed if the sun was up; the light messed up his ability to fall asleep.

Ben noticed flashes of light over the planet, near both the obviously inhabited areas and the dark sea beyond. It took him a moment to realize it was a thunderstorm. He snagged one of the many cameras stored in the Cupola, snapping a few shots. It was a bit difficult at the speed they were moving, the planet drifting quickly past below.

“Mind if I join you?”

Ben glanced down towards his feet at the easily recognizable British accent. Hux was looking up at him - or down, from the other man’s perspective - from Tranquility, only his head and shoulders visible.

“Course not.” Ben scooted over to make room, as Hux floated up into the Cupola. It was only ten feet across at its widest point, not counting the considerable equipment around the edges, so it was a cozy fit for two.

“Look at that,” Hux murmured, looking up at the storm that was now, technically, directly beneath them.

“It’s amazing to see the size of it,” Ben commented, watching the lightning flash. “There’s so much lightning happening at once, what must be at least tens of miles apart.”

“Something you can’t really appreciate, watching it from earth,” Hux agreed. They were silent for a minute, watching the storm pass by. “Taking some photographs?” Hux nodded at the camera Ben was securing back to its mount.

“Yeah. I was trying to get a shot of the storm, but I’m not sure it worked.” Ben smiled ruefully. “So much for that photography training.”

Hux chuckled, and it was a warm sound. “I spent most of that training just trying to adjust the focus.” Ben grinned in sympathy. “You do start to figure it out by doing, though I’m sure I’m not remotely qualified to give you any tips.”

“Rey picked it up really easily,” Ben confessed. “She’s already taken some great shots, so I really should get her to show me how she does it.” He shifted to look out a different window, back at the storm they’d passed. “Where are we? That storm was over…Australia?”

Hux’s eyes followed his gaze. “Yes,” he agreed. “Eastern Australia.”

“I love storms. When I was a kid, I used to sneak out of bed to watch them from the porch.” Ben smiled at the memory.

Hux glanced at him. “I like them, too. Seeing lightning over the sea from an aircraft carrier is pretty spectacular.”

“Wow, I bet. You were deployed?”

“Yep.”

“Where to?”

“Persian Gulf,” Hux answered.

“I’ve never really been at sea,” Ben admitted. “Properly, anyway. Unless water survival training and NEEMO count, but I think that’s sort of different.”

“You were on a NEEMO expedition?” Hux turned in the small space to face Ben more fully. NEEMO, or NASA’s Extreme Environments Mission Operations, saw astronauts living at an underwater research station for a week or two, working in a harsh environment that simulated outer space.

“Yeah. You?”

Hux nodded. “It _is_ quite different from being out at sea, although definitely no less intense.”

“It was a really cool experience,” Ben remembered. “And quite good preparation for _this_.” He grinned. “I did wonder if they named the program after Nemo the fish.”

Hux snorted. “Someone at NASA with a sense of humor, perhaps?”

“They do like their acronyms,” Ben mused. “Maybe they thought a nickname would make it easier to remember.”

“Speaking of nicknames, I’ve noticed that Phasma calls you Kylo,” Hux observed.

“Oh, yeah.” Ben offered a shrug. “It’s kind of a silly thing. When I was in training, someone called me that once by mistake - I think they were going for my last name, but somehow got it mixed up with something else. Anyway, it stuck.”

“Poe doesn’t use it?”

It was true, the other man rarely called him anything other than Ben. Solo, occasionally. “Nah, not really. I got to know him before the nickname came about, so maybe that’s why. And sometimes I think Phasma just has an objection to calling people by their given names.”

Hux laughed. “That might be true. At least her own.”

“Have you always gone by your surname?”

“Mostly.” Hux nodded. “At least since university. I’m not terribly fond of my first name.”

“Which is?” Ben pressed, with a smirk. He was sure he’d been told at some point, but he honestly couldn’t remember.

Hux rolled his eyes. “Armitage.”

“Armitage?”

“Yes.” He gave Ben a look. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“What?” Ben held up his hands in surrender, struggling to keep a smile off his face. “No ideas here, promise.”

Hux smirked. “So do you prefer Ben or Kylo?”

“Oh! Either one. I go by Ben mostly, except for with some of the astronauts.” Ben shrugged. “I’ll answer to either.”

They were quiet for a long moment, watching the planet roll by beneath them. Hux’s watch beeped, and he glanced down to his wrist. “It’s getting late,” he observed. “I think I’ll turn in.”

“I’m not far behind you,” Ben agreed.

Hux turned to exit the Cupola, glancing back up at Ben as he pushed himself downwards. “Goodnight, Ben.”

Ben smiled after him. “Goodnight, Hux.”


	3. Chapter 3

**_Day Nineteen_ **

On Christmas Day, breakfast was a leisurely affair.

Ben joined his crewmates in Unity, which they’d decorated the previous evening. A row of stockings, one for each of them, hung on the side of the Node 3 hatch, at least from Ben’s current orientation. The small Christmas tree was actually upside down, mounted to the ceiling. It was perfect, really, there was a decoration for every angle. Poe was velcro-ing a small Santa to the wall. Phasma was wearing a Santa hat and armed with several more; she was currently trying to put one on Hux, who was fending her off with one hand while holding a pouch of what was probably tea in the other.

Rey emerged from rummaging around in the food storage. “Maple muffins?” She offered, holding up a handful of packets.

That got a cheer.

Well in advance of launch, each crew would jointly decide what holidays they wished to have off. It could sometimes be a bit of a negotiation, with astronauts from different countries and of different traditions. It had turned out that all six of them celebrated Christmas, so that was an easy choice. It would be a rare weekday off work, mandatory exercise their only obligation, a day to relax and celebrate. They’d take turns video-conferencing with family members at home and open the gifts sent up to them, many having arrived in the Falcon with Ben, Poe and Rey. They couldn’t exactly put the presents beneath the tree with no gravity, but affixing them nearby worked well enough.

Ben retrieved a pouch of coffee and slipped through the hatch into Destiny to use the water dispenser. The instant version of the beverage wasn’t his ideal, but it was vastly preferable to six months without. It was prepackaged to his specifications, with just a bit of creamer. Powdered creamer, but nevertheless. Astronauts were allotted three hot beverages per day; Ben had one cup of coffee with breakfast, a second typically in the afternoon, and a cup of tea in the evening.

He’d no sooner ducked back into Unity than Phasma plopped a Santa hat on his head, securing it with a strap so it wouldn’t float away. Ben shot her a look, and she grinned. Hux smirked at him. He still wasn’t wearing one; Phasma had evidently given up on him, at least for the moment.

Ben smiled, shrugged, and drank his coffee.

 

\------------

 

Ben’s feet pounded against the treadmill, his legs beginning to feel the strain of the workout. It was a bit frustrating, really, to be working so hard when he’d only have to release his harness to comfortably float. Yet that was exactly why the workout was so important. The two hours per day of mandatory exercise were essential to ensure their muscles didn’t atrophy during the mission.

After a lively and relaxed breakfast, the crew had largely gone their separate ways for a few hours. Ben typically exercised later in the day, but had swapped times with Rey, who was eager to speak to her family right away.

Ben actually enjoyed running. He’d never liked it as a kid, but had taken it up in graduate school as a way to relieve stress and quiet his often whirring mind. That had turned out to be good preparation for the intense physical fitness demanded of him by NASA. On station, exercise was the one part of his workday where his brain could largely switch off. Amidst a busy day of experiments and maintenance, his mind appreciated the reprieve, even if his body objected to the simulated gravity.

He was mostly used to the treadmill, known to the astronauts as T2. It was a bit strange to run wearing a harness, and it had taken Ben awhile to settle on the right amount of resistance. It was also the only time he wore shoes of any kind on station, socks being plenty sufficient when you were simply floating. Then there was the fact that he was technically running perpendicular to the floor, although he couldn’t actually tell the difference unless he glanced over at Phasma, who was currently bench-pressing on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device further down the module, at a right-angle to Ben.

Ben grabbed the towel tucked into his shirt, using it to mop over his hair. In microgravity, sweat just sort of accumulated on your body; he found that the sweat from his face and hair tended to pool atop his head. He mopped it up carefully and regularly, so as not to unintentionally ambush a passing crewmate with floating droplets of perspiration. He was sure neither Phasma nor Finn, just visible through the hatch to Unity, would appreciate that. 

T2 was also exceptionally noisy, so much so that hearing protection was needed for the person using it. Fortunately, that hearing protection came in the form of specially designed headphones, and the Depeche Mode album currently blasting in his ears was definitely keeping him going.

He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes to go. It was Christmas. After his workout, and with the exception of the scheduled video call with his family, he had the rest of the day to himself. Up until dinner anyway, but he was rather looking forward to the festivities.

 

\------------

 

In the middle of the afternoon, Ben headed for Unity to make his second cup of coffee. He’d finished his video chat about an hour before, surprisingly with both of his parents, his mother for once having taken a day off. Han and Leia were at their house in D.C., joined by Ben’s uncle Luke and his dad’s old friend, and fellow astronaut, Chewie. It wasn’t the first time Ben had celebrated Christmas away from his family, although it was perhaps the first time he’d had an inarguable excuse.

With his scheduled items out of the way, he’d then spent a bit of time in his sleep station, sending emails to friends at home. The rest of the crew were scattered around the station, talking or writing to family and friends, or simply taking some time to relax. Hux, it transpired, was also in Unity, floating with one foot hooked under a foot restraint, focused on his iPad and drinking what looked like a pouch of tea. With a nod to the other man, Ben snagged his coffee from the food storage unit. Returning to Unity after retrieving the needed hot water, he found a foothold near the table and sipped on the beverage through the straw, careful of the temperature.

Hux had set down his iPad - or, rather, Velcroed it to his leg, the primary method of carrying such devices around on station. “Enjoying your holiday?” He queried conversationally.

Ben nodded, swallowing a mouthful of coffee. “Yeah. It’s been nice to have a day to relax.”

The edges of Hux’s mouth turned up ever so slightly. “Indeed.”

“You?”

“I’ve quite enjoyed spending Christmas on station,” Hux admitted.

“Despite the Santa hats?”

The other man rolled his eyes, but Ben thought he detected the tiniest trace of amusement.

“Your first spacewalk is coming up,” Hux observed, apparently changing the subject. “Not long now.”

“I know,” Ben shook his head. “It’s strange to think that I’ll finally be doing it, after so many simulations in the pool.” ‘The pool’ was the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at JSC, where astronauts trained for spacewalks in the US spacesuit. Ben’s first venture outside the station was for planned, routine maintenance and, as such, the necessary procedures had been worked out months, perhaps years, in advance. He’d performed the sim many times over, along with those for a number of other potential spacewalks. He imagined the real thing would feel a bit different. 

While perhaps the most extreme, spacewalking was just one of the many complex procedures that astronauts were required to learn backwards and forwards, inside and out, before ever being cleared for a mission. Training for spaceflight was by far the hardest thing Ben had ever done, and he had a PhD in Aeronautics. He thought he’d known the meaning of hard work while at CalTech; his dissertation certainly hadn’t written itself.

“What?” Hux asked, and Ben looked up in surprise. “You looked like you were frowning.”

“Oh!” Ben chuckled. “I was thinking about training, on spacewalks and… everything else. How even getting my PhD didn’t prepare me for the amount of information I would be expected to absorb and retain.”

Hux smirked. “It is quite unlike anything else,” he agreed. “If it makes you feel any better, it was equally a shock for someone coming from a military flying career.”

“What did you find hardest?” Ben asked.

Hux paused for a moment, thinking over his answer. “I suppose probably the breadth of knowledge required. I was plenty accustomed to studying in the military, and especially as a test pilot, but it was always within a narrower range of focus. Flying, engineering, tactics. Up until becoming an astronaut, I never thought I’d have any need to learn basic surgery or how to perform complex chemistry experiments, much less spacewalking. Also, languages-“ he tacked on after another pause. “Russian was a challenge.”

Ben nodded. “No kidding.” Astronauts were required to learn Russian in order to operate the Russian segment of the ISS. ESA astronauts also had the further complexity of a home base that might or might not be in their native country, although English was required for anyone in the space program. “Do you speak German, too?”

Hux smirked. “I _have_ lived there for the better part of ten years.” He shrugged. “My German is decent, in any case.”

“One of the things I found hardest about training was figuring out what was actually essential information,” Ben shared. “Especially in some of the sims, trying to determine what I actually needed to know right then and what I could ignore.”

“That was one area where my years in the Navy were helpful,” Hux replied. “As in a spacecraft, in a fighter jet you’re always thinking about what the next thing is that might kill you.”

“Any particular close calls?” Ben wondered. “Well, hang on, you said you were a test pilot. You engineered your _own_ close calls.”

Hux smiled, flashing his teeth. “Something like that. Once, on a training run, my entire nav system shorted out.”

Ben’s eyes widened. “Shit. What’d you do?”

“I radioed my squadron leader, he had the others break formation around me, and I was able to follow someone else back to base.” Hux shrugged. “Most importantly, kept my shit together and didn’t panic. Flying in formation, you can’t exactly make any sudden movements.”

“No kidding.”

“It worked out fine. And turned out to be good preparation for my future career, spaceflight included.”

Ben shook his head. The story was told with the kind of nonchalance that came from years of high-pressure situations. As an astronaut. A test pilot. A Naval pilot, which meant he’d probably done his fair share of carrier landings, too. Ben knew the type - his father was one. Poe, too. They were certainly a special breed.

 

\------------

 

It was a proper Christmas feast. Or, at least as proper as it could be when all of their food came out of cans and foil pouches.

“This is really amazing,” Rey observed with a smile, surveying the individual containers of roast turkey, sweet potatoes and vegetables secured to the table.

“Fortunately, NASA believes in holiday meals,” Phasma told her, lifting a packet of cranberry sauce in evidence.

Finn floated over, juggling a handful of further pouches. Ben helped secure them to the table, catching a glimpse of the label. “Cornbread, nice.”

They all gathered around, settling into comfortable floating poses and eagerly passing packets of food.

“Happy Christmas,” Hux offered then. “Or Merry, for our American crewmates.”

“The proper way of saying it,” Phasma teased, over the chorus of Happy and Merry Christmases. They all lifted their drink pouches in a toast, a bit strange without glassware.

“Yes, “happy” _is_ the proper way of saying it,” Hux retorted with a smirk, opening his pouch of green beans.

“Nope, definitely not,” Poe countered, after swallowing a mouthful of turkey.

“You’re a terrible Brit,” Finn was telling Phasma, in mock horror, while Hux and Poe debated semantics.

“Half,” she corrected him. “And I grew up in the States, remember?”

“I’m just going to stick with Joyeux Noel,” announced Rey, who had largely grown up in France.

“I’m being abandoned at every turn,” Finn protested. “Ben, help me out here.”

“Sorry man,” Ben laughed. “It’s definitely Merry Christmas.”

“So much for international cooperation,” Poe quipped.

 

\------------

 

When their Christmas dinner had been demolished, and the empty packets tidied away, Hux retrieved a container from food storage and brought it to the table.

“That had better be dessert,” Phasma told him, and he pulled a packet free and pushed it towards her. She read the label. “Hot chocolate!”

“Hot chocolate,” he affirmed. “And gingerbread.” That packet came towards Ben, who grabbed it out of the air. “And…” A third packet went to Rey, who looked it over curiously.

“Trifle?!”

“In it’s first ever appearance on the ISS,” Hux told her. “So I make absolutely no guarantees as to what it will be like.”

Each of them were allotted a small percentage of what was known as bonus food: special items of their own choosing for the mission, all approved by NASA, of course. Ben’s included a favorite brand of coffee, some chocolate, and the space adaption of his favorite gumbo, among other things. Astronauts would periodically share their bonus food for special occasions, and it wasn’t uncommon for an ISS Commander to provide an occasional treat to their crew as a means of maintaining morale. 

“Thanks, Hux.” Poe helped distribute the remaining packets, a trio for each of them.

“Yes, thank you,” Rey beamed.

“This is so cool,” Finn exclaimed, tearing open the pouch of trifle.

Hux gave a slightly stiff nod in response. Ben had the distinct impression that surprise acts of kindness might be a tad out of his comfort zone. Still, the other man was clearly committed to his crew’s well-being, even when it came to dedicating some of his own bonus food space to bring them all a holiday dessert.

Ben started with the trifle.

“I’ve never had this before,” he told Hux, after swallowing the delicious bite of fruit and cream. “It’s really good.”

“I’m not usually that fond of sweets,” the other man confessed. “But I’ve always liked trifle at Christmas.”

Ben blinked. “Sorry, the first part of that sentence made no sense to me whatsoever.”

Hux smiled. He didn’t smile that often, Ben had realized, at least not fully. It was usually just a smirk, which Ben had come to interpret as the Brit’s way of showing amusement. A real smile changed the planes of his face, making him look more relaxed, more boyish. 

And really, Ben thought, who wouldn’t smile after trifle and hot chocolate?!

 

\------------

 

“Okay,” said Rey, when dessert, too, was gone and they were still lingering around the table. “It’s Christmas, and we’re all away from home. So, I want to know, what does everyone miss most?”

“Well, that’s kind of depressing,” Finn retorted, although he was smiling.

“It doesn’t have to be,” she objected earnestly. “And I’m not talking about people, of course we all miss family and friends. I was thinking more of little stuff, like… ice cream.”

“Beer,” Poe said wistfully, and everyone laughed, probably because they all felt the same. They weren’t permitted any alcohol on station.

“Pillows,” Finn offered.

“Rain.” That was Hux.

Ben’s turn. “Driving.”

“Flying.” Hux, Phasma and Poe said in unison.

“You’re in a space station!” Rey objected with a laugh.

Phasma shook her head. “It’s not the same.”

“Showers,” Rey said then, to a chorus of agreement.

“Fresh fruit,” Finn added. “Actually, fresh any kind of food.”

“And fresh air,” Poe tacked on.

“Hearing nature,” Ben offered. “Like birds, or the wind-“

“What, the sounds of machinery not doing it for you?” Phasma quipped, and everyone laughed again. “I miss exercising without having to be harnessed to the equipment. As much as I enjoy being weightless.”

“Yes.” Hux agreed immediately. “And running outside.”

“Unless it’s summer in Houston,” Poe added. “Then I’ll take the air-conditioned gym, thank you.”

“I don’t know how you can stand the summer in Houston,” Hux retorted.

“It’s not that bad,” Ben countered.

Hux gave him a disbelieving look. “I was relieved to launch in September just to escape the humidity.”

Ben chuckled.

“Ben’s just used to it,” Poe laughed. “I mean, I’ve gotten used to it, too. But I’m from the Pacific northwest, so I feel you, Hux. Houston is hot.”

“You people and your rainy, cool climates,” Phasma teased, shaking her head.

“You’re half British,” Rey pointed out, a tad incredulously.

Phasma nodded. “Yep. But when I wasn’t in the UK, I was growing up in a desert in Nevada.”

“Only slightly different weather,” Finn quipped.

“I had something kind of similar,” Rey shared. “Splitting time between hot, southern France and the UK.”

“You’re half British, too?” The taller woman asked.

“Technically all-British,” Rey replied. “My birth parents were Brits, but my adoptive mother is French, so I mostly grew up in the Cote d’Azur.”

“So you should’ve had no problem adapting to Houston,” Ben teased her.

Rey wrinkled her nose. “Houston’s still worse.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has quite a bit of NASA geekery - spacewalking, hey! - but in the next chapter, Ben and Hux's conversations start to become a little more personal.

**_Day Thirty-One_ **

Ben was in the Quest airlock, carefully polishing his spacesuit’s visor. It was the first week of January, only six days after they’d celebrated New Year’s… three times. First, at midnight in the three ESA astronauts’ home base of Cologne, which was actually 11 PM on station. Then again an hour later, and finally, a very sleepy New Year’s greeting at 6 AM, when the clock struck midnight in Houston. Of course, there was no champagne.

And now it was January 2020 and, the next day, Ben would be doing his very first spacewalk. The better part of the past two days had been spent making sure all of the equipment was ready and reviewing the necessary procedures. He was one hundred percent ready to go and, at nearly 10 PM, should be heading to bed, but Ben had felt compelled to do one last quick check before turning in.

“All set?”

Ben glanced up to find Hux hovering in the open hatch that connected the airlock with Unity.

He nodded. “Just double-checking.”

Hux indicated the visor Ben was wiping clean. “Make sure you get all the solution off of that.”

The solution in question was an anti-fog treatment, essential to ensure good visibility while in the suit. More than one astronaut had wound up with an eyeful of the abrasive stuff mid-spacewalk, so it was now standard protocol to be extra careful in cleaning it off.

Ben smiled wryly. “Will do, thanks.”

“How’re you feeling about tomorrow?”

Ben gave the visor one last wipe and, satisfied that it was completely clean, stowed the supplies before turning to Hux. “Good. Prepared. Not nervous, but I’m definitely buzzing a bit with energy.”

“Hence the late night prep?” A smirk played around the edges of Hux’s mouth.

Ben wondered if Hux knew that he’d already polished his visor, hours ago. He probably did, the Brit had an uncanny ability to know what was going on in all parts of the station at all times. It might explain why he was now checking on Ben. But, really, extra attention to cleaning was hardly the worst way Ben’s pent-up pre-spacewalk adrenaline could be utilized.

“Guilty.” Ben offered a shrug. “It was either that or review the procedure again, but I’ve been through it so many times today alone that I feel like I’ve already done the EVA.”

He almost got a smile for that. “A sign of good preparation.”

In an earlier phase of his career, Ben would have reacted negatively to much of this conversation: the reminder to clean his visor properly and the questions about his readiness for the upcoming task, as though he wasn’t capable of adequately preparing on his own. He knew that wasn’t actually what Hux was implying. The other man took his responsibility to his crew very seriously, and that included ensuring that they were prepared for whatever tasks they were taking on, especially something as monumental as a spacewalk.

It had been a hard adjustment, early on in Ben’s astronaut training, to an environment where feedback was constant and direct, and your errors were routinely paraded around for everyone’s benefit. Objectively, Ben understood - mistakes were a valuable learning tool - and over time he’d learned not to take it so personally. It helped that every other astronaut was subject to the same treatment, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t still struggle with it from time to time. After months and months of training together, he didn’t have any trouble taking direction, or even criticism, from Poe; but then, they’d been colleagues and friends a long time.

With Hux, it was…surprisingly easy. Perhaps it was the other man’s calm demeanor, or his willingness to pitch in on any task, no matter how mundane. Or the way he would check up on his crew with a casual question, so subtle that they didn’t realize until after the fact that they’d essentially given him a full status report. Whatever the combination of reasons, Ben had yet to bristle at anything Hux had said to him, and that was fairly notable.

“How many EVAs have you done?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Three,” Hux told him. “Two on my first mission and one during Expedition 61.”

“How would you describe it?”

“It’s simultaneously the most exhilarating and exhausting thing you’ll do on station.” Hux raised an eyebrow. “But, of course, you’ll find that out for yourself tomorrow.” He turned to go. “Get some rest, Ben. You’re going to need it.”

 

\------------

 

“Okay, kids,” Poe called out. “Better go to the toilet now, because there won’t be time to stop once we get on the road.”

Ben laughed at that, although it sounded a bit strange echoing around in the oxygen mask currently secured over his mouth and nose. Phasma grinned - or, at least he thought she did, from what he could see behind her own mask. Even Hux’s lips quirked a little, what passed for a genuine smile from the man.

A joke though it was, Poe’s advice was legit. Ben gestured towards the hatch separating them from Tranquility, as if to say, “ladies first”. Phasma squeezed by him with a thumbs-up.

It was the morning of their spacewalk and preparations were well underway. Poe and Hux were double and triple-checking the spacesuits and equipment, ensuring everything was in order. Rey and Finn were conducting experiments elsewhere on station, with no specific duties related to the spacewalk. Phasma and Ben were semi-useless, the masks inhibiting their ability to speak clearly, and the long hoses connecting them to the station’s oxygen supply complicating their every movement. Their primary function at the moment was to breathe the 100 percent oxygen, which would flush the nitrogen out of their bodies and thus prevent them from getting decompression sickness while in their spacesuits. That would end the spacewalk real quick, not to mention be extremely unpleasant and potentially dangerous.

Ben took his turn in the bathroom, careful of his oxygen hose. He readjusted his numerous layers - electrodes relaying his heart rate, adult diaper (hopefully unnecessary, but he would be in his spacesuit for most of the day), long underwear, and the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment that would regulate his body temperature. The material was a bit stiff, the tubes of water quite prominent, but he knew he’d be grateful for it if he needed it.

Once put back together, he carefully made his way back across Unity to the Quest airlock. Phasma was in the middle, maneuvering into the bottom half of her spacesuit with some help from Poe. Hux pushed Ben’s own gear in his direction, and the younger man caught hold of the suit, pushing it down towards the floor so he could get his legs over and in. It was not as easy as he’d hoped. Hux immediately came to his aid, holding the suit steady as Ben wiggled inside, while trying to keep his oxygen hose out of the way.

He gave Hux a thumbs-up when his legs were finally fully in the suit, hoping to communicate his thanks.

The older man smirked. “Oh, we’re just getting started.” He nodded at the top half of the suit, mounted to the wall behind Ben. “In you go.”

The Hard Upper Torso of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit could be donned by one method only, getting underneath it and wriggling up and in. It might have been an utterly ridiculous procedure, if they hadn’t all been trained on it so many times. Phasma’s head was just emerging from her suit as Ben handed Hux his oxygen mask and ducked down to get into his own. Hux hovered in front of the suit, helping to guide Ben’s head and arms into the appropriate holes.

Finally fully inside the suit, now Ben was literally useless. He couldn’t really move, other than to wave his arms around a bit, and he certainly couldn’t reach the rest of his gear, attached to the nearby walls. He just had to sit tight and watch while Hux did all the work, starting with securing the seal between the Hard Upper Torso and the bottom half of the spacesuit. At least Ben could talk now, no longer wearing the oxygen mask. The entire airlock had been partially depressurized, in order to assist with their transition to the lesser pressure in the suits.

Ben was glad it was Hux helping him suit up. There wasn’t an astronaut on board he didn’t trust to do so - he knew Phasma was in excellent hands with Poe - but there was something about Hux’s laser sharp focus, his precision, his demeanor, that put Ben at ease. Not generally prone to nerves at this stage of his career, Ben found the waiting period pre-spacewalk somewhat unnerving. All this time to sit, unable to even help with preparation, trapped with his own anticipation and the constant reimagining of everything he’d do once he was out there. Being in Hux’s capable hands was actually helping him to relax.

The Brit had moved on to Ben’s gloves, pulling on first the snug fitting inner gloves, and then the bulkier outer gloves, securing them into place. He shifted position until he was floating up by Ben’s head.

“Okay?”

Ben nodded. “I’m good.”

“Make sure you can reach your water.”

Ben tipped his chin, ensuring he could access the straw. “Yep, all set.”

“Okay then.” Hux affixed Ben’s snoopy cap, which would enable him to communicate with the station and Mission Control, making sure the microphone was in the correct place. He then reached for the helmet and, with a nod from Ben, settled it in place. The locks clicked.

Ben automatically looked at the display on his suit, waiting the required minutes to ensure that the pressure was holding. He gave Hux a thumbs up, a bit awkward with the glove, and the other man nodded. Hux crossed to the other side of the airlock, retrieving the com.

“Houston, Station. Suit pressure checks complete.”

Ben could hear both sides of the conversation over his headset. Hux turned back to Ben and Phasma, glancing between them. “We’ll be back shortly. Don’t go anywhere, you two.”

Ben huffed a laugh, Phasma’s own chuckle coming through the com. They were quite literally mounted to the wall, as Hux well knew; neither one of them would be moving until Hux and Poe were good and ready to let them.

 

\------------

 

It was another hour before they were making final preparations. Ben and Phasma, still attached to opposite walls in the airlock, had spent the time completing their exercise protocol. This mostly consisted of kicking their legs and was designed to further help in flushing the nitrogen from their bodies. Poe and Hux had been in and out, monitoring the spacewalk preparation in between checking in on experiments elsewhere on station. When they returned and began retrieving tools from the crew lock, just beyond where Ben and Phasma were stationed, Ben felt a flare of relief. Finally, it was time.

Hux set about securing various tools and equipment to Ben’s suit. The tools were attached in a precise layout, to ensure that he could access all items in the order he needed them without getting tangled in their tethers. Ben assisted as best he could, clipping the tether hooks to his suit as Hux handed them over. Across the small space, Poe and Phasma were doing the same.

Phasma was first to come off the wall, as she would be ahead of Ben in the airlock. He could only watch as Hux and Poe finished suiting her up and maneuvered her into the crew lock. Hux returned almost immediately to release the clasps holding Ben to the wall, allowing him to drift forward. It only took another minute or two for Poe to finish getting Phasma situated, and then together the two men attached Ben’s SAFER jetpack, his failsafe in the unlikely event he became detached from the station while outside. It was a bit odd, Ben thought, just floating in the middle of the space while Hux and Poe circled him, slowly and carefully ensuring the jetpack was properly secured. As it was a particularly critical piece of equipment, he did appreciate their diligence.

Poe gave him a thumbs up, and then they were tipping him on his side, steering him towards the crew lock. Ben did his best to help as they eased him through the hatch, feet first, next to Phasma. This was an even smaller space than the equipment lock they’d been in previously, made further crowded by Poe, who was helping make final adjustments. Hux was hovering just outside the crew lock, holding the com as he reviewed the procedure checklists.

Poe extricated himself, slipping back through the opening to float beside Hux. Glancing back, Ben saw them reaching up to ease the hatch closed. When it sealed with a click, it was just he and Phasma. Ben’s head was by her feet, her own head towards the outer hatch.

He couldn’t see the other men anymore, but he could hear Hux’s voice as it came over the com, addressing Mission Control. “Ben and Phasma are in the airlock. Inner hatch closed.”

“Well,” Phasma said, after the Capcom had replied. “Whose idea was it to put the two tallest astronauts on station together in the airlock?”

 

\------------

 

The outer hatch was open. Actual, legit, outer space was only a short distance away, just through the round exit from their now depressurized airlock. Phasma, who had a prior spacewalk under her belt and was EV1, or lead spacewalker, had opened the hatch and secured it in place.

“Houston.” That was Hux, still on the com on the other side of the sealed inner hatch. “Are you ready for them, Snap?” He’d been talking Phasma and Ben through the depressurization procedure over the past half hour or so, but would now hand them off to the Capcom at JSC, who would be their primary point of contact during the spacewalk.

“Copy that, Hux. Hello Phasma, Ben, can you hear me okay?” Snap Wexley’s voice came through the com. An experienced astronaut, he was serving as one of three rotating Capcoms for Expedition 62.

“Loud and clear, Snap,” Ben told him, as Phasma affirmed the same.

“Great,” Snap replied. “You can both go ahead and switch on to battery power.”

Ben did so, carefully monitoring the display in his suit once he’d unhooked from the station’s power, ensuring that everything was still operating as expected. So far, so good. At Snap’s direction, Phasma began slowly making her way out of the airlock. As she exited, Ben moved closer to the open hatch, eager for his first glimpse of space. He’d seen it through the station windows, of course, but this was different. It was currently daytime, and sunlight filtered in through the opening.

“Houston, EV1.” Phasma’s voice reached him through the headset. “I’m tethered to the exterior of Quest.”

“Copy that, Phasma.” Snap replied. “EV2 - Ben - proceed with egress.”

Ben was currently tethered to both the inside of the airlock and to Phasma, to ensure she wouldn’t drift away before her own tether was secured outside. The tether between them would now do the same for him, as he detached from the airlock and carefully made his way through the hatch. He was so focused on his tasks - getting through the hatch without catching the bulky suit on anything, tethering himself to the ring outside, reporting his status to Snap - that he didn’t stop to think about his environment.

That is, until - finally secured to the exterior of the station - he glanced up, and the view took his breath away.

Earth was spread out beneath them, a blue globe surrounded by the black of space. Ben had never really given much thought to the planet’s beauty, but from the vantage point of the station it was absolutely extraordinary. And if he thought the Cupola had a good view, being out here was something else altogether.

“Enjoying the view, Kylo?” He glanced over at Phasma, her expression of amusement just visible through her helmet.

“Yeah, sorry,” Ben grinned sheepishly, realizing he’d just been hovering in place, staring at earth.

“I’m pretty sure I did the exact same thing when I came out on my first spacewalk,” she confessed.

“I know it’s nice out there, guys, but we _are_ on a schedule,” Snap reminded them, his good-natured tone of voice softening the reminder.

“Ready when you are,” Ben affirmed, tearing his eyes away from earth and back to the station, to the task at hand.

 

\------------

 

Hux had been right. This was easily the most exhilarating experience Ben had thus far had as an astronaut, and that was saying something. From his current position attached to the space station’s truss, Earth was still more or less beneath him, now black with glittering lights in the darkness. Behind and above him, the expanse of black space stretched beyond what Ben could comprehend. He felt simultaneously incredibly isolated and incredibly present, cut off from everything he knew save the familiarity of the two voices over his headset and of the tools in his hands.

It was a couple of hours in, and he was preparing to install a new camera on the station’s robotic arm. He was on the port side of the truss, which ran perpendicular to much of the station’s living space and housed many critical systems, along with the solar arrays. Ben had spent the first part of the spacewalk on the opposite side, across the airlock from where he was now, taking photographs of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. The AMS-02 was a particle-physics experiment designed to search for antimatter and dark matter; updated pictures of the equipment were needed to determine any necessary maintenance and also for use in research publications. Phasma had her own set of tasks for the spacewalk; she was currently busy routing some cabling at the end of the Harmony module.

It had grown dark, something that would happen more than once during their nearly five hour spacewalk. Despite the flashlights mounted to his helmet and some lights on the exterior of the station, Ben found it decidedly more challenging to work in the dark. He hoped the sun would be up again before he needed to change location; moving around the outside of the station safely was a complex enough endeavor without the added obstacle of reduced visibility.

“Phasma, Ben, we’re going to lose com in about a minute,” Snap told them. This was expected, as the ISS briefly orbited out of range of the communications satellites, and Snap had warned them it would be coming up. “Hux, they’re all yours.”

“Copy that, Houston.” Hux’s crisp accent drifted through the com. Isolated outside as they were, it was almost possible to forget that he - and Poe, Finn and Rey - were just on the other side of the aluminum, steel and Kevlar walls of the station. “Ben, I’ve got a warning for you when you’re ready.”

“Go ahead,” Ben affirmed.

“Avoid contact with the lens when removing the existing camera unit. It will be eight counter-clockwise turns to remove the bolt.”

“Copy that, Hux.” Ben set about detaching the old camera with the drill-like tool in his hand, as Hux turned his attention to relaying Phasma her next step. As expected, they hadn’t heard from him since the start of the spacewalk, but he’d clearly been paying attention. He’d stepped into Snap’s shoes in relaying the procedures without missing a beat. Ben wouldn’t have expected anything less.

Hux bounced back and forth between the two of them, talking them through their respective procedures. Ben had successfully removed the camera and was wrapping it carefully; he would bring it back into the station when he returned. Even relatively simple tasks were made much more complicated by the lack of gravity and the bulky spacesuit gloves, which left him without much feel for what he was holding. He had both hands free to work, the foot restraints and tethers holding him securely to the station. In addition to his main tether, winding its way up to his location from where it was still attached to the outside of the airlock, he was also attached to a nearby point on the truss with a much shorter one, which kept him from drifting out of reach of his work site.

They’d regained communications with NASA by the time Ben was starting to install the replacement camera, and that handoff between Hux and Snap went just as smoothly as had the previous one. The step-by-step instructions from the ground - or inside the ISS, in Hux’s case - were incredibly helpful, but it required a considerable amount of focus to execute the necessary tasks. Not to mention the difficulties of moving around in the spacesuit. Listening to Snap relay the next part of the procedure, Ben took a deep breath, bit down on the straw to take a sip of water, and then refocused his attention on the camera in front of him.

_Almost there_.


	5. Chapter 5

**_Day Forty-One_ **

“Happy Birthday!”

Brandishing a foil packet at Poe, Rey had just led them all in a slightly off-key rendition of the song. There were no candles, of course, for safety reasons, but their crewmate didn’t seem to mind. He also didn’t seem to mind the party hat that Phasma - who else - had put on his head; Poe had a good sense of humor about that sort of thing.

“Thanks, guys,” he beamed, taking the offered packet of chocolate pudding cake. The others collected their own packets of what was widely agreed upon to be one of the best space desserts. A birthday seemed a good occasion for cake all around.

Poe was one of only two of them to celebrate his birthday on station; Finn’s birthday had come in September, just after the Expedition 62 crew had arrived on board.

“Another year older,” Phasma teased, around mouthfuls of cake. “Getting closer to fifty all the time.”

Poe narrowed his eyes at her playfully. “You know, you’re not far behind me, lady.” He waved his spoon in her direction. “Just you wait.”

At newly turned forty-five, Poe was the oldest member of their crew. The simple fact that astronaut candidates were required to have advanced degrees and/or extensive military experience before entering the space program meant that most didn’t even begin their training until thirty. It was a minimum of four years from the start of training before you went to space, and for many astronauts it could be five or six years, or longer. It had been six and a half for Ben, who had turned thirty-six just weeks before his launch.

Poe, who had entered the space program at a few years past thirty, had been thirty-nine at the time of his first trip to space. Astronauts typically spent five or more years on the ground between missions, and thus tended to be into their forties by the time of their second visit to the ISS. Ben knew that Hux and Phasma were younger than Poe, but not by much. Finn and Rey were around his own age, give or take some months.

“Well,” Poe said, holding up his now-empty cake packet. “Nothing quite beats homemade cake decorated by Lucy, but this made for a pretty good alternative.”

“Was she disappointed that you’re not home for your birthday?” Rey wondered.

“A little, I think. Probably more so that I won’t be back in time for hers, either,” Poe admitted, wrinkling his nose. “I mean, she knows to expect it, but it’s sometimes hard to explain to a little kid.” His eyes met Ben’s. “Solo gets it, better than any of the rest of us.”

Ben rolled his eyes with a chuckle. “Yep.” Children of astronauts learned early on not to expect the presence of both parents at all times. Or even most of the time. Astronauts worked long hours and traveled a lot, even when they weren’t in space. Missed birthdays, holidays, and school events were just part of the deal. He didn’t particularly like talking about it, actually, and was glad no one pressed him further.

“I’m making tea,” Finn said instead, pushing off in the direction of the food storage. “Anyone else?”

 

\------------

  
****

Ben tipped his head back, carefully putting a drop in one eye. He straightened up, blinking at Poe. The drop had made his vision a tad blurry.

“Ready?”

Ben eyed the device in Poe’s hand. It was the morning after the older man’s birthday celebration, and they were already well into the day’s physiological experiments. “I’m not entirely sure I trust you with that.”

“Relaaaax,” Poe sang, waving the tonometer in Ben’s general direction. “I know what I’m doing.”

“What you’re doing is being very careful not to jab me in the eye, I hope?”

Poe grinned. Ben wasn’t sure if he ought to find that reassuring. “If it makes you feel any better, you get to do me next.”

“True,” Ben conceded. “If you poke me in the eye, I’ll just return the favor.”

Protests aside, it was with no real trepidation that he held open his eyelid so the other man could put the end of the tonometer against his eyeball. It was reading the pressure, yet another piece of biometric information to be transmitted back to earth. Many astronauts experienced a degradation in eyesight while in space, so NASA was collecting data to help determine how and why that occurred.

Not only did Poe _not_ jab him in the eye, but Ben barely felt it at all. He supposed it was a good thing they’d all been trained on these procedures. Poe recorded the data, and then passed over the tonometer. Ben put a clean tip on the end of the device, while Poe put his eye drop in.

“I was very gentle,” Poe quipped, with a smirk, as he watched Ben approach. “So you’d better be, too.”

“How hard can it be?” Ben teased. “I just stick it in your eye, right?”

Poe lifted his eyes to the ceiling, as if praying for patience. “You might want to rethink your technique.”

It was apparently the day for eye-related data collection, as they were next instructed to move on to an ultrasound. A technician back on earth was on the line to help walk them through it, although this wasn’t the first time either one of them had used the equipment. Ben was the first patient, again, dutifully hovering in front of the ultrasound while Poe put gel on the probe. It was a bit cold against his closed eyelid, but otherwise fine. After all of the medical procedures he’d been subjected to by NASA, this was hardly objectionable.

“Look left. And look right.” Ben obligingly followed Poe’s instructions as the other man went through the procedure. The imaging was being fed directly down to Mission Control, so the medical experts at NASA could confirm they were getting usable data. The entire thing only took about ten minutes, and then Poe was cleaning off the probe so they could swap places.

“How’re your folks doing?” Poe asked, once the medical team on earth had okayed both sets of imaging.

“They’re fine.” Ben didn’t glance up from where he was stowing the ultrasound equipment, making sure it was properly secured. “Leia works constantly, and Han’s doing a lot of flying.”

Poe chuckled. He was across the module from Ben, retrieving items for their next task: blood draws. BB-8 was whirring quietly nearby, updating the inventory of medical supplies. “Sounds like they’re both in their element then.”

Ben huffed a laugh. “Yep.”

“You get to talk to them every week?”

Ben finished with the ultrasound machine and drifted towards his colleague, taking the offered needle and blood tubes. “Thanks. Han, yes,” he answered. “Leia, hit or miss. Usually miss.”

Poe wrinkled his nose. “Sorry, man.”

“It’s fine,” Ben shrugged. “It’s not like I talk to her every week when I’m in Houston, either. And I suppose I’d rather her focus her energy on securing future space program funding than chatting with me about nothing in particular.”

Poe snorted. “True. Well, give them my best when you talk to them next. I haven’t seen either of them in ages.”

“I’m sure they’d love to have you up to D.C.,” Ben pointed out. “Or invite themselves over to your house when they’re next in Houston.”

Poe laughed. Leia had been Director of JSC when Poe had first joined NASA, and had thus been much more involved in the hiring and training of astronauts than she was these days. She had taken an immediate shine to the young Navy pilot, which Ben had at first found mildly annoying. It had seemed like every time he’d spoken to his mother, it was “Poe this” and “Poe that”. But then he’d joined the space program and met the man for himself. Poe was one of the friendliest and most easy-going people Ben had ever known. He’d never acted like he had any kind of in with Leia, other than expressing a fondness for the woman, and he’d never treated Ben any differently for being her son.

Ben found a foothold and turned his attention to his blood draw, Poe doing the same across the small space. Since the first time, Ben had drawn his blood twice more without assistance from Hux or anyone else, and was now quite the expert at completing the procedure in microgravity. They worked in silence for a few moments, the easy quiet only punctuated by Rey entering the module to retrieve something from a storage unit. Noticing that both men’s eyes were on her, she grinned and waved the items in their direction: a pH strip and a couple of accompanying charts.

Ben knew what that meant, and Poe certainly did, too. It was a common sight, as they were all required to test the pH of their urine about 25% of their time on station.

“I’m peeing for science,” Rey announced, then departed without a backwards glance.

 

\------------

 

**_Day Fifty-Three_ **

A blaring alarm jolted Ben from sleep.

For a few seconds, he blinked in the darkness of his sleep station, trying to get his bearings. He was on station, and whatever that alarm was communicating, it couldn’t be good.

The thought had him wriggling out of his sleeping bag and pushing open his sleep station door. Hux was already half way out of his own, and Poe’s and Rey’s heads emerged at almost exactly the same time as Ben’s. They all turned to look at the display of emergency lights, and Ben sucked in a breath as he observed which one was lit up.

The fire alarm.

He was fully out of his sleep station and heading for the intercom before the realization had fully registered. Hux was nearly to the computer, Poe just behind him. Their commander didn’t need to tell them what to do; they had all trained on this scenario countless times, if never all together.

Ben reached the intercom. “Phas, Finn. We’re getting a fire alarm, confirm?”

“We have it, too.” Finn’s voice came back.

“It’s in Destiny,” Poe called, peering over Hux’s shoulder as both men studied the computer display. The US lab was the next module over. Ben thought it was probably a good sign that they couldn’t smell any smoke.

“Finn, we’re coming to you,” Ben said into the intercom, glancing at Hux as he spoke. The other man gave an affirming nod.

They made their way through the station single file: Hux in the lead, then Rey, then Ben, then Poe. 

“BB-8, wake,” Poe called out, as they passed through Destiny. “Check environmental stats.” The small robot immediately woke from standby, detaching from its charging port and emitting a series of beeps.

Ben didn’t see or smell any indication of fire, but neither he nor the others stopped to investigate. Per protocol, they would gather with the rest of their crew and ensure everyone’s safety before proceeding further.

Phasma and Finn were waiting for them in the Zvezda module. They were on com with Mission Control, and Finn wordlessly vacated the spot in front of the intercom, letting Hux take his place.

“Houston, Station. This is Hux. Reporting fire alarm in Destiny.”

“Copy that, Hux.” The Capcom’s voice came over the com. “All other stats look good.”

“We came through Destiny, there were no smoke or flames. Crew are fine, and BB-8 is running an environmental check now. I’m going to proceed with the investigation.”

There was a slight pause while the various teams in Mission Control evaluated the potential risk of letting the astronauts get on with it. A commotion of voices could be heard from the ground, but Ben couldn’t make out any of what was being said.

“Confirmed, Station.”

“Copy, Houston.” Hux’s eyes swept over each of them for the briefest of moments. “Poe, Finn, you stay here and stay on com with Houston. Rey, with me, and Ben, with Phasma. We’ll do a sweep of Destiny.”

Later, when his senses weren’t all sharply tuned towards searching for any hint of fire, Ben would marvel at Hux’s perfect and seemingly effortless strategy in pairing them off. He’d left Poe, the only other Falcon commander on board, in Zvezda, nearest to where those spacecraft were docked. Ben and Phasma were both qualified to fly the Falcons in an emergency, but Poe was the best choice should they need to begin powering them up on short notice. While Hux, Phasma, Rey and Ben were all headed to Destiny, the protocol was to work in pairs should they need to separate, and Hux had ensured that the two rookies wouldn’t end up on their own together. And he’d made the decision in seconds, though Ben supposed he would have thought through such things during mission training.

 

\------------

 

There was no evidence of fire. The four of them searched Destiny from top to bottom, checking all of the experiments, equipment, and systems. It had been immediately clear that there were no obvious flames, but their thorough investigation yielded nothing of concern. BB-8 had evaluated and reported on the conditions in the module, including oxygen levels (still normal) and presence of smoke (none). They’d turned off the alarm early on, and it hadn’t sounded again. A good sign.

They’d been investigating for about an hour when Hux deemed their search complete, and they returned to the others in the Zvezda module.

“Nothing,” Hux said to Finn and Poe, who turned nearly in unison at their approach. “Probably a false alarm.”

He repeated as much to Mission Control, who affirmed the conclusion. False fire alarms were a known entity on the ISS, but any alarm was treated with the same degree of thoroughness and caution, just in case.

Ben glanced around at the group, floating in Zvezda, all considerably more relaxed now that they’d determined it a false alarm. They looked a slightly less polished bunch than usual, even by casual space station standards, dressed in their standard-issue long john pajamas. Rey, who typically kept her long hair in a tight bun, had quickly thrown it into a messy ponytail, which was floating up over her head. Absent the customary gel, Hux’s red hair was floating, giving him a slightly bed-head look that was actually mildly endearing, in sharp contrast to his usual perfectly styled appearance.

“We can all go back to bed,” Hux said then, glancing around at the group. “If the alarm goes off again, we’ll do another sweep, but everything points to it being a false alarm.”

Everyone murmured their agreement and then their goodnights, and then Ben followed his three crewmates back to their quarters in Harmony. Throughout the entire process, everyone had remained calm and focused, just as they had been trained to do. As their commander, Hux had epitomized that, never once raising his voice or betraying any sense of panic. Even in the midst of a potentially dangerous situation, he was as steady as ever. Ben was reminded of Hux’s story of his nav computer failing while flying in formation; the man clearly had nerves of steel. As did Poe, Ben well knew, but there was something distinctly different about the two men he’d serve under on the ISS. They were both unquestionably competent astronauts, but while Poe seemed to thrive off of adrenaline, to perhaps even do his best work in a high pressure environment, Hux was simply unaffected by it. His manner didn’t change, from one normal minute to the next crisis-fueled one.

Ben had gotten a thorough preview of Poe’s command style during their months of mission training. The other man was outgoing and extremely personable, basically impossible not to like. While his skills were undeniable, Ben suspected that a lot of Poe’s strength as a leader came from a natural ability to get along with anyone and set a positive and upbeat tone. Poe could unfailingly be counted on to lighten the mood.

Hux was much more reserved, in contrast, although perfectly pleasant. He had an uncanny ability to know what was going on in all parts of the station at all times, which gave the impression of complete and utter control, even while he remained one of the most unassuming people Ben had ever met. Hux exhibited the kind of unshakeable competence that made you willing to follow him to the ends of the earth - or, in this case, off it entirely -, knowing with absolutely certainty he’d get you back in one piece.

They’d reached their sleep stations, and Ben wasted no time in nestling down in his sleeping bag. It was four AM, and they’d have to be awake again in two short hours. He needed all the rest he could get.

 

\------------ 

 

“You okay?”

Ben pulled his hands away from his face and looked at Phasma. “Yeah.” He sighed. “Just tired.”

She smiled sympathetically. “Still recovering from the middle of the night fire alarm?”

He nodded, offering her a wry smile. “What is it they say about the second day after a poor night’s sleep being worse than the first?”

It had been two full days since the fire alarm. He’d managed a decent night’s sleep the previous night, but still didn’t feel particularly well-rested. He’d felt a little off all day, less focused than usual, which in turn had made him tense and irritable. Exercising had helped, a chance to blow off some steam. It’s not like he hadn’t been plenty used to weird and long hours while doing his PhD. Maybe he was just getting old.

Ben narrowed his eyes playfully at his colleague. “You seem fine.”

Phasma grinned. “I can pretty much sleep anywhere, at any time, for any amount of time. Learned that skill at West Point, and it’s served me well since.”

Ben chuckled. “I bet.”

He’d almost declined Phasma’s invitation to join her for dinner, but was glad he’d reconsidered. It had easily been the most enjoyable part of his day. They’d shared some of their bonus food - Ben had brought his gumbo, and Phasma had provided a mushroom ravioli. Despite all being confined on the station together, it was actually possible to go hours at at time without seeing a particular crewmate; or, even, anyone at all. They didn’t all eat dinner together most nights, the Friday evening meal the one regular exception, but it wasn’t uncommon for two or three of them to gather for mealtime and some socialization. Ben did appreciate having time to himself, but -in the absence of any other in-person human contact - he found he enjoyed the opportunity for casual conversations with his crewmates.

But now the positive effects of a meal and Phasma’s lively company were wearing off, and Ben decided it was probably time to crash. Tidying up the food pouches and bidding his crewmate goodnight, Ben slipped out of Zvezda and through the narrow Zarya module, floating over carefully secured gear. Poe and Finn were in Unity, laughing over something while finishing their own meal. Ben waved off the offer to join them, ready to head to his sleep station for the night.

“Ben.” Nearly though to Destiny, Ben turned to find Hux beckoning to him from the hatch between Unity and Tranquility. “Come see this.”

“See what?” He didn’t get a reply, but nevertheless followed the other astronaut. He floated into Tranquility just in time to see the lower half of Hux’s body disappearing into the Cupola. Ben dove down after him, carefully pulling his lanky body into the small space. “What am I supposed to be- whoa.”

For he’d looked up as he entered the Cupola and was greeted by green light, streaking across the darkened sky over earth. Ben was quite literally gaping at the sight before him. Hux chuckled.

“Is that-“ Ben couldn’t quite formulate the rest of the sentence. The green light was shimmering over the surface of the planet, the color vibrant.

“Aurora Australis,” Hux told him.

The Southern Lights.

“It’s beautiful,” Ben breathed.

“I thought you might appreciate seeing it,” the other man said. “Especially if you hadn’t yet.”

“I haven’t. And, yes, I do,” Ben smiled at Hux, and the other man’s lips quirked slightly in return. “Thanks.” They watched in silence for a long moment, as the planet rolled by beneath them. “I’ve never seen it from earth, either. Australis or Borealis.”

“Me neither,” Hux admitted. “It’s easier to see from up here, and it happens more often. On earth you generally have to be either very far north or - in this case - very far south.”

Ben nodded, still transfixed by the moving light. “I feel like I should be used to being in space by now, and then I keep having these experiences that blow my mind.”

Hux chuckled. “I don’t know if you ever get used to this.” He gestured out the window, to the view of earth below. “Or should, even. At least to the point of not being affected by it.”

The man had a point. Ben couldn’t imagine ever looking out the Cupola windows at earth and not having it take his breath away.

“I never thought I’d be an astronaut,” Ben found himself saying. “I never imagined I’d be up here, seeing things like this. Well, not until I joined the space program.”

“Not even as a kid?”

Ben snorted. “When I was young, I was determined I’d stay as far away from a NASA career as possible. Obviously, things didn’t go quite as planned.”

“Trying to escape your parents’ shadow?”

Ben made a face that was half-grin, half-grimace. It didn’t surprise him that Hux knew who his parents were; everyone else in the space program did. “Yeah.”

“I know a thing or two about that.” At Ben’s curious expression, Hux elaborated. “My father was the Commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. That’s the officer training school for the British Army.”

“Whoa.” Ben considered that. “How’d he feel about you joining the Navy?”

Hux smirked. “He hated it. I suppose a small part of him was pleased I’d entered the service, but he wanted me at Sandhurst. Under his thumb, as it were.” He shook his head. “Which, of course, is precisely what I was trying to avoid.”

“You said _was_ ,” Ben observed. “Is he retired now?”

“Deceased, actually,” Hux corrected, without a trace of emotion.

“Oh geez, sorry,” Ben stammered out, feeling like he’d just put his foot in his mouth. “I didn’t realize.”

Hux shook his head. “No worries. It’s been a few years now, and we weren’t exactly close.”

“Did you want to be an astronaut when you were a kid?”

“I suppose I did,” Hux mused, turning to peer out another window. The Aurora was still visible, but further away now, as the ISS continued its orbit around the planet. “Not an uncommon career aspiration for a child, I imagine. There wasn’t a path for British astronauts, then, so it was purely fantasy, of course.”

“Only not,” Ben laughed. “As it turned out.”

Hux smirked. “Indeed.” He glanced over to Ben. “What changed your mind about being an astronaut?”

“It sort of snuck up on me,” Ben confessed. “I went into engineering, which was already what my parents’ backgrounds were in, but I figured I’d teach or work in industry, something _different_ from what they did. And then I ended up at JPL, because it’s affiliated with CalTech-“

Hux snorted. “Yes, you ‘ended up’ at JPL, as though you didn’t have to work ridiculously hard to get there.”

Ben hadn’t been able to turn down the opportunity for an internship, and then a job, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, despite its somewhat uncomfortable proximity to his parents’ own careers. But the home of the Mars Rover and other such projects was a pretty amazing place.

Ben grinned sheepishly. “You know what I mean. And it was amazing, don’t get me wrong. I could’ve stayed there quite happily. But then the call for astronaut candidates came out, and I thought… why not? I honestly didn’t think I’d ever make it.”

“Even with the family legacy?” Hux’s tone was ever so slightly teasing. Ben scowled, and the other man’s smirk only grew.

“Honestly, I thought it would count against me,” Ben admitted. “That everyone would assume I was just trying to get in because of my parents and not on my own merit. I’m pretty sure some people still thought that when I first showed up for training.”

“I doubt that,” Hux challenged. “NASA vets its candidates extremely carefully. Regardless of who your mother is, you wouldn’t have been accepted if they didn’t think you were the right choice. And I think I’m correct to assume she wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Hux had a point. “That’s true,” Ben acknowledged. “She wasn’t involved in my application at all, not that she was still directly hiring astronauts by that time, anyway.” He cringed. “I would never have applied while she was still Director of JSC. Can you imagine?”

Hux smirked. “Oh, I can.”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, I suppose you can.”

“Give yourself some credit, Ben. It’s never an easy thing to follow your parents into a career, especially when they’re as accomplished as yours are.”

“Thanks.” Ben offered a wry smile. “I love being an astronaut, and I really don’t feel like I have the right to complain about anything. But it’s weird sometimes, to be up here, and realize that my dad commanded one of the earliest ISS missions, and my mom ran the program that built this place.”

“And now oversees the entire space program,” Hux added.

His mother had begun her NASA career in 1984, a year after moving to Houston with her husband and an infant Ben so that Han could begin astronaut training. Those who didn’t know her well assumed she was a trailing spouse. While that might have initially been true, anyone who’d spent any time with Leia Organa knew the depth of her professional ambitions. She’d made a name for herself at NASA, becoming an invaluable member - and then leader - of the International Space Station Program and eventually Director of JSC. Her appointment as Associate Administrator, and then Administrator, of NASA was a surprise to no one, least of all her husband, who willingly took his turn as trailing spouse when they’d relocated to D.C.

Ben sighed. “Yep. It’s hard to escape her.”

Hux chuckled. “No kidding. There’s a reason I joined the Navy.”

When they finally made their way out of the Cupola, it had been nearly an hour. So much for getting to bed early, but Ben was in an even better mood than he’d been after dinner, so he didn’t hardly mind.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I watched The Last Jedi yesterday for the first time since seeing it in theaters, and I found myself a lot more fond of Kylo after spending the last few months writing him. Even if the Ben in this fic is a considerably nicer guy than Kylo Ren!

**_Day Sixty-Eight_ **

Ben was in the Cupola with Rey and Poe, a tight squeeze for the three of them. He was slightly behind the other two, who were hovering in front of the controls for Canadarm2. Ben had installed a new camera on the robotic arm at the start of the year, which was now providing video on one of the three displays. Canadarm2 itself was visible outside the Cupola windows and, a bit beyond it, a SpaceX Dragon on its approach.

_A resupply spacecraft_.

“Houston, Station.” Rey’s voice broke through their quiet focus. “Monitor 2 is zoomed out completely. We’re going in for capture.”

“We copy and confirm, Station.”

Rey adjusted her grip on the controls and, ever so slowly, Canadarm2 began to move. An unmanned vehicle, the Dragon was incapable of docking on its own and needed to be retrieved. Rey was controlling the robotic arm that would do just that. Poe, at her side, was keeping a close eye on the monitors and displays, ready to offer assistance if need be. Ben’s job was to monitor incoming information from the Dragon’s systems and alert his crewmates of anything that would impact capture, such as a change in angle or drift.

Operating Canadarm2 was a pretty big deal. They were all qualified to do it, of course, but the arm that had basically built the station they now occupied had the capacity to do both incredible work and cause incredible damage, if not used correctly. Hence the many simulations, including the one they’d run two days prior in order to brush up on the procedure.

It was actually quite rare for the Expedition 63 prime crew to work all three together on station, and Ben was enjoying the opportunity.

Rey was biting her lip, her brow furrowed in concentration as she watched the displays, and the robotic arm crept towards the Dragon. It was only a few meters away now. Ben scanned the data on the screen in front of him. Everything looked good.

And, perhaps a minute later, the end of Canadarm2 connected with the docking port on the Dragon. They all took a moment to look at the various monitors, as well as the data displays reporting from the robotic arm and the incoming spacecraft, and Rey exhaled a breath of relief.

“Station, Houston. We’re showing capture complete,” she reported. “You have a go for post-capture reconfiguration.”

“Copy that, Rey.” It was Snap on console in Houston again, and he sounded pleased. “Great job, guys.”

Poe squeezed Rey’s shoulder, glancing over his own to grin at Ben. “Well done, both of you.”

“I think Rey did most of the work,” Ben felt compelled to point out.

The woman in question shook her head. “I couldn’t have done it without the both of you.”

Ben wasn’t entirely sure that was true. He considered himself a fairly quick learner, but Rey picked up on things faster than anyone he’d ever met. Her point still stood, however. Everything in space exploration was teamwork, and you wouldn’t get very far without the people around you. It had been a somewhat odd transition from the relative solitude of doing a PhD.

Flight controllers at Mission Control were now taking over control of the robotic arm. They would see the Dragon safely docked, and then the ISS crew would get to unpack it.

And unpack it they did.

The Dragon had arrived in the morning, and it took the rest of the day to extract its six thousand pound payload. Hux, Phasma and Finn came to assist, and the Harmony module - to which the resupply craft was berthed - descended into controlled mayhem, with six astronauts shuffling a staggering number of items around in the small space. Hux felt compelled to remind them to take careful inventory, lest they overlooked that amidst the chaos. BB-8 hovered in the middle of the module, helping to scan and log new items; the robot’s cheerful beeping only added to the cacophony. There was new equipment, components for various experiments, and of course essential supplies.

The box of fruit was as exciting as it was expected. Ben remembered Phasma’s enthusiasm over the fruit that had arrived on his Falcon. Now, he understood. After nearly ten weeks of tinned meat and freeze-dried veggies, a fresh apple was possibly the best thing he’d ever tasted.

He was exhausted when Rey all but dragged him back into the Cupola after dinner. He’d asked for her guidance in taking better photos, and she’d taken on the side-project with a great deal of enthusiasm.

“Part of getting good photographs,” she explained, as she scooted up into the Cupola, a half-heartedly protesting Ben at her heels. “Is _planning._ What you want to take photographs of, and when is the best time to take them. See?”

She gestured out the window, and Ben drifted up beside her, following her hand with his eyes. 

“The Nile,” he breathed.

The river was unmistakable, winding through the Egyptian desert. With the blue of the Mediterranean to the north, and the Red Sea to the east, it couldn’t be anything else.

“And there’s no cloud cover,” Rey affirmed. “I checked the weather earlier. So-“ she retrieved a Nikon D4 from the side of the Cupola and put it in Ben’s hand. “A great time for pictures.”

Perhaps therein lay his problem, Ben mused, as he accepted the proffered camera. And it might have nothing to do with his camera skills, or lack thereof.

Ben Solo was not a planner.

He’d learned to be, by necessity. NASA had drilled it into him. Perhaps Caltech, too, before that, but the level of organizational skills he’d acquired as an astronaut would’ve astounded his dissertation advisors. He still wasn’t much of a planner on his own time, what precious little he had of it. As much as he loved his job, Ben also appreciated the mental break. He was never going to be one of those astronauts who checked the map and weather first thing in the morning, planning out the day’s photography before even leaving his sleep station or having a cup of coffee. Fortunately, Rey seemed inclined to do that bit for him.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Ben snapped back to the present - the ISS, the Nile below, the camera in his hand, and the mildly annoyed European a couple of feet away.

“Yes?” He tried, not very convincingly.

Rey rolled her eyes. “Do you actually want me to help you or not?”

“Yes, sorry,” Ben placated her. “I do. I just got distracted.”

Rey patiently walked him through a few of the camera’s settings and, under her tutelage, he managed a few pretty decent photos. Not that the ones he’d taken previously were bad, exactly, but these were definitely better.

“Thanks, Rey,” he told her genuinely, when they’d paused for a break, watching earth rolling steadily by beneath them. The Nile was still visible, but further in the distance now. “I’m an engineer, you’d think this stuff would make more sense to me.”

“Well, I’m an astrophysicist, so go figure,” she told him with a wry grin. “And I imagine you haven’t spent a lot of time working on it. With some practice, you’ll get it no problem. I took a lot of pictures growing up; my dad loves photography, so we always had cameras around.”

“Well, that explains it.” Ben couldn’t help smiling back at her. “When we did the training at JSC, I think you were the only one in a room of otherwise very competent pilots and scientists who knew what you were doing.” She laughed. “I mean, I take photos on my phone, but-“ he lifted the camera. “Not with anything like this.”

Ben snapped a few more pictures while Rey watched, offering pointers here and there.

“I can’t believe we’re already halfway through Expedition 62,” she mused then. “It’s gone so fast. It’s going to be weird when they leave.”

“Tell me about it.” Ben tried to imagine the ISS without Hux, Phasma, and Finn. He couldn’t quite manage it. “You and Finn seem pretty close.”

“He’s my closest friend at ESA,” she agreed. “It’s been amazing to be up here with him.”

“I didn’t really know him all that well before this,” Ben admitted. “Or Hux.”

“It’s fun to have the chance to work with astronauts from other agencies, isn’t it?” Rey smiled. “We wouldn’t have known each other very well, either, if we hadn’t been assigned to 63 together.”

Ben nodded in agreement. He was definitely glad he’d had the chance to get to know Rey.

“I’d barely even met Phasma before getting here,” she continued. “But she’s great. And Hux was on my NEEMO mission in 2016. I knew him from ESA, of course, but that was the first time we’d ever worked closely together.”

“I didn’t realize you were on the same NEEMO mission.” Ben’s own had been the following year.

“Yeah. I was happy to hear he was commanding Expedition 62; I knew he’d be good at it.” Ben smiled. “Orbital sunset in a few minutes,” Rey said then, glancing at her watch. “Up for a little night photography?”

“And just when I thought I was beginning to get the hang of it.”

Rey smiled. “You’ll be fine. You want a longer exposure time, so the camera can capture enough light. And-“ she turned, rummaging for something amongst the equipment. “This.”

Ben eyed the item she held out. “A selfie stick?”

Rey gave him a look. “This is _not_ a selfie stick.” Ben couldn’t quite manage to keep a straight face, and her eyes narrowed. “Now you’re just being deliberately obtuse. This will hold the camera steady better than you can, smart ass.”

With a grin, Ben took the camera mount and followed Rey’s instructions.

 

\------------

 

**_Day Seventy-Two_ **

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, and Ben had just finished his weekly videoconference with Han. Not “his parents”, as Leia was seldom available to join in; she’d managed it just once in the eleven Sundays Ben had been on station, plus Christmas. Han, for his part, seemed happy for the weekly chat, although Ben supposed he had considerably more free time in his retirement. It wasn’t as though he spoke to his parents every week when he was on earth, although Leia sometimes complained she didn’t hear from him often enough. Ironic, that.

Finn was in Unity when Ben floated through in search of his afternoon cup of coffee. The other man was making a peanut butter sandwich, using the mold-resistant tortillas that passed for bread on station, and waved the packet in Ben’s direction.

“Want one?”

Ben shrugged. “Why not.”

After making his sandwich and retrieving his pouch of coffee, Ben joined Finn at the table.

“How’s your Sunday going?” The Brit asked with a smile.

“Oh, fine,” Ben answered. “I just finished my video call with my dad.”

Finn’s expression was curious. “He commanded one of the early ISS missions, didn’t he?”

Ben nodded. “Yep. In 2001.” The year Ben had graduated high school.

“Does he ask all kinds of questions about how everything has changed on station since then?”

“Yeah, he demanded a video tour when I first arrived,” Ben admitted, with an eye roll. “There weren’t nearly so many modules during his mission.”

“I bet.” Finn swallowed a bite of sandwich. “I have my call with my parents in just a little bit. It’s funny, I think I speak to them more often from here than I do when I’m on earth.”

Ben chuckled. “I was thinking the exact same thing. Do yours complain about not hearing from you enough when you’re at home?”

“Ha, sometimes.” Finn laughed. “My two older brothers are in the military, though, so they’re pretty used to us all being far away and working crazy schedules.”

“Both of your brothers are in the military?” Ben realized he didn’t know much of anything about Finn’s family.

“Yep.” Finn nodded. “One in the British Army and one in the Royal Marines. My dad, too - he was in the Army, but he’s retired now.”

Ben whistled. “Jeez, no pressure.”

“You’re telling me.” Finn shook his head. “Needless to say, they didn’t exactly get it when I begged off military service to become an academic.”

“My dad was Navy,” Ben shared. “But he never suggested I go into the military. I think he knew that wasn’t going to happen.”

Ben had always been a bit of a loose cannon, not a great fit for military service. Truthfully, so was Han, but he’d carved out a distinguished career in both the Navy and the space program, despite his tendency to buck authority. Like father, like son.

“But you followed in his footsteps anyway,” Finn pointed out, apparently following Ben’s train of thought.

“Yeah.” Ben shrugged. “How did your family react when you went into academia instead?”

Finn laughed. “Mostly with confusion. Growing up, there was just always this assumption that I’d join the military, like my dad and then my brothers. It felt like I was turning my back on them, in a way, but I knew it wasn’t the life I wanted.”

“They must have come around to the idea of you being an astronaut?”

“Yeah,” Finn agreed. “We’re cool, now. Not that we ever weren’t, really, they just… didn’t get it. But then,” he gave a wry smile. “I don’t really get the military thing, I suppose.”

“I hear you,” Ben replied. “I know a lot of military pilots. My dad, and most of his NASA colleagues were military, too. And now I’ve been friends with Poe for a bunch of years. So basically, I can fake my way through a conversation about fighter jets with surprising ease, and I like flying well enough, but military service was never something that appealed to me.”

Finn grinned, and Ben felt a sudden wash of camaraderie with his colleague. “What I know about military aircraft is limited to T-38s and whatever else was necessary for astronaut training. Hux and Phasma - they’re great crewmates, don’t get me wrong - but they have this thing, a common frame of reference, I guess, that I don’t share. And whenever they’re discussing military aircraft, I’m just like - hey, anybody want to talk about planetary sediment?”

Ben laughed. “Ah yes, earth scientist.”

Finn laughed, too. “That’s me.”

Hux chose that moment to appear at the end of Destiny - Ben could see straight through the next module from where he was floating -, heading in their direction.

“Hux, we were just talking about how neither of us understands the appeal of military service,” Ben said, once the man in question had reached them. He deliberately kept his tone light and knew from the responding eye roll that Hux had recognized it for the teasing it was intended as.

“ _Civilians_.”

Ben grinned at Hux’s mock disdain.

“On that note,” Finn said, with a chuckle, pushing himself off of the wall. “This civilian is going to video chat with his parents.”

When their colleague had departed from the module, Ben turned back to Hux, who was pulling a pouch of tea from food storage. 

“Are you still active military?” He wondered.

Hux shook his head. “No. There isn’t reciprocity between the British military and ESA the way there is in America. There haven’t been enough British astronauts for it to be worth them working that out.” He ducked back into Destiny to add water to his tea, returning a moment later. “I had to retire when I joined the space program.”

Ben knew the reciprocity agreement Hux was referring to. In the States, military astronauts were technically on loan to NASA, still employed by their respective military branches. If they left the space program before retiring from the military, they would be assigned to another post somewhere else. Ben wasn’t sure how often that had happened; all of the military astronauts he knew had stayed with NASA for the remainder of their careers.

“How’d you end up on that subject of conversation?” Hux queried with a raised eyebrow, hooking one foot under a foothold and taking a careful sip of tea.

“We were talking about video chatting with our folks, and Finn mentioned his dad and brothers being in the military.” Ben smiled, offering a shrug. “It kind of evolved from there.”

Hux smirked. “Mm. This crew is unusual, I think,” he mused, after a moment of quiet. “In that so many of us have our Sunday calls with our parents.”

“You too?”

The older man nodded. “Well, my mother, anyway.”

That meant that Hux was probably single. Not that it had any bearing on anything whatsoever. While astronauts regularly telephoned a variety of family and friends, the weekly video conferences were generally reserved for immediate family - spouses and children, most often, or parents. Poe spoke with his wife and daughter, Phasma with her husband. Ben knew Rey talked to both her parents and her boyfriend. That more than half their crew were calling their parents, and that only one of them had children, might have been indicative of a generational shift away from marriage, or perhaps a reflection of the decreasing proportion of astronauts that came from the military, whose members - on average - tended to marry younger.

Ben wondered this aloud.

Hux shrugged. “Hard to say. It’s a mix of things. I do think that if you’re not in an established, serious relationship when you enter the space program, it’s much harder to find one after.”

“No kidding.” Ben agreed, idly wondering how this conversation with the generally taciturn Hux had taken an unexpected left-turn into romantic relationships. “I had a relationship basically end because I became an astronaut.”

Hux smirked, but his eyes were sympathetic. “Not the lifestyle they wanted?”

“Didn’t want to leave California, was more like it.” Ben shrugged. “He had a career there, so I couldn’t really blame him. In the end, we both chose our careers over each other.”

“Oh, I’ve been there,” Hux agreed. “The last guy I was with was as career driven and insanely busy as I am. Which was perfect, except for the part where we never saw each other.”

Ben blinked. He’d wondered, casually, about the other man’s sexuality, but Hux was disconcertingly hard to get a read on.

The Brit was still talking. “Although it’s preferable to someone constantly complaining that I’m never available.”

Ben was still stuck on this new revelation. Not that it mattered, at all. He wondered if Hux had noted his own use of male pronouns when describing his last partner. Hux had probably known already, if he’d stopped to think about it. The man was terrifyingly perceptive and Ben quite transparent when it came to just about everything.

“It’s hard,” Ben said, coming back to the conversation. “Our schedules are crazy, we travel a lot, and then we occasionally go to space for six months at a time. It makes it difficult to date, and it’s a lot to ask someone to put up with.”

“Not so different from the military, in that regard,” Hux pointed out. “I think a lot of astronauts that come from that background have families who are already used to it. Not that it’s easy, by any means.”

“I know Poe got married when he was in the Navy,” Ben agreed. “I entered the space program at twenty-nine, and I was definitely not thinking about marriage at that point, even with the guy in California. But maybe that’s just me.”

“You joined NASA at twenty-nine?”

Ben nodded. “I turned thirty a few months in.”

Hux looked thoughtful. “So that makes you what, now? Thirty-six?”

“Yep.”

“So young,” the other man teased. “I was the same age as you when I launched on my first mission, actually.”

“How many years ago was that?” Ben wondered.

“In 2013,” Hux told him. “I’ll be forty-three in May, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You don’t get to celebrate your birthday on station.”

“Nope.” Hux shrugged. “I did on my first mission. This year, I plan to celebrate my birthday by being fully recovered from the effects of space flight.”

“Does it really take that long?” Ben asked, a touch wearily. The Expedition 62 crew was slated to land in early March, meaning Hux’s birthday would fall at least two months later.

“It really does,” Hux affirmed, smirking at Ben. “Just you wait.”

 

**\------------**

 

The following Tuesday, there was a scheduled spacewalk. Ben shifted his workout to earlier in the day in order to be available to assist when his colleagues reentered the station. He therefore found himself on the same exercise schedule as Hux, who was getting setup on T2 while Ben did the same on ARED. Finn, Ben’s usual workout partner, wouldn’t be hitting the gym at all that day; he was currently on the exterior of the station, along with Poe.

Other than a nodded greeting, Ben and Hux didn’t communicate. They were oriented in different directions and both wearing noise-canceling headphones. Ben wasn’t big on talking while exercising anyway.

He did, however, find his eyes drifting over to the other man from time to time. Pausing in between sets of bench presses, he couldn’t help but notice Hux. The Brit was clearly a runner. Well, most astronauts were, Ben supposed, by necessity if not by preference. Even on the ground, astronauts on active flight status had a weekly exercise requirement. But, Ben had found, you could generally tell the difference between people who ran because they had to and people who ran because they liked it. Hux was definitely in the latter camp.

His form was perfect. He had the build for it, too - long legs and a lean, yet compact, torso. Ben was in excellent shape himself, but he was built more like a linebacker. Hux’s hair was escaping its neatly slicked state in his exertion, and Ben liked the messier look.

He was staring. Which was… unexpected and probably inappropriate. Facing the way that he was, he didn’t think Hux would’ve noticed. Ben pulled his attention away and resumed his bench presses.

That was definitely enough of that.

 

\------------

 

“Airlock fully pressurized. Kylo, you can open the hatch.”

At Phasma’s command, Ben turned to rotate the lever that would open the hatch between Quest’s equipment lock, where they currently were, and the outer crew lock, that held Poe and Finn. The latter two were coming inside after a spacewalk that had lasted nearly five and a half hours.

Phasma came to assist in sliding the hatch upwards, and Ben reached beneath it to help pull Finn through the opening. Poe waved from his position further back in the small airlock, and Ben grinned at him. 

“Poe, you’re going to have to hang tight for a minute,” Phasma said into the com, so the man in question could hear her over his headset. There was only space for one fully suited astronaut in the equipment lock at a time, at least until they got Finn’s jetpack off.

“Don’t worry about me,” Poe replied. “I’m good.”

Ben unfastened the locks on Finn’s helmet, lifting it off of the other man’s head. He knew from experience that, while wearing the helmet wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, it was certainly a nice feeling to be free of it after the EVA ended.

“Hey,” Finn breathed, sounding a little weary.

“You okay?”

“Yep.” Finn smiled. “Just tired.”

Ben and Phasma set about removing Finn’s jetpack. Ben found it interesting to be on this side of things, after having been the one awkwardly floating while other astronauts constructed or deconstructed the spacesuit around you. Phasma was the primary support crew member for this spacewalk, fulfilling the role that Hux had held when she and Ben had been outside. Ben had assisted with suiting up his colleagues, but had then been assigned to other work on station until Poe and Finn had reentered the airlock, at which point Phasma had summoned him to help once again.

Freeing Finn of the jetpack, they maneuvered him against the wall and attached his spacesuit to its mount. Phasma pulled off his gloves, while Ben went to help Poe through the hatch.

“Now you’re stuck there,” she told her crewmate teasingly, and Finn rolled his eyes with a chuckle.

In short order, they had both spacewalkers mounted to opposite walls, exactly as they had been hours earlier when they’d been suiting up. Finn was just slipping out of his suit, as Ben helped Poe out of his gloves and snoopy cap, securing all of the items nearby.

Both men were experienced spacewalkers - this was Finn’s second, having completed his first with Hux during Expedition 62. Poe had now done three, his first two during his prior mission. As such, they both knew the drill, right down to the bone-tiredness that descended once you were back inside and out of the suit, the adrenaline finally wearing off. From his own spacewalk, Ben also remembered being unusually chilled afterwards, even once out of the cooling garment and into warm, clean clothes.

While Poe and Finn went to change, Ben busied himself making them each a pouch of coffee. Poe returned first, and Phasma immediately pressed an energy bar into his hand. The spacewalkers hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and it was now nearly dinnertime. Ben drifted over to where Poe was floating, secured via a footrest and looking as though he might be able to fall asleep exactly where he was. He handed over the pouch of coffee.

“Thanks,” Poe murmured, closing his eyes in contentment at the first warm sip.

Finn returned then and was promptly given his own coffee and energy bar. Ben and Phasma left the two spacewalkers to their snack and relaxation in Unity and returned to the airlock to tidy up the gear. With Hux and Rey elsewhere on station, and Finn and Poe too exhausted for conversing, the module was unusually quiet; Ben could hear only the constant hum of the station, and his and Phasma’s quiet voices as they reorganized and stowed the spacesuits and other equipment.

“Smells like someone’s been welding in here,” Ben observed, as he worked in the outer crew lock. He’d noticed the same smell upon returning from his own spacewalk; it was apparently what the airlock smelled like after exposure to space. At least to him. The scent was an ongoing debate amongst astronauts.

“Smells like barbecue to me,” Phasma disagreed, right on cue.

Ben chuckled. “I think maybe you’re just longing for home-cooked food.”

She grinned. “Well, yes. But that doesn’t change what it smells like.”

When Ben slipped back through the hatch into Unity, his two colleagues were looking a tad more refreshed, if still exhausted.

“Everything went well?” He queried. They’d be doing an official debrief with NASA shortly, which was mainly what Poe and Finn were summoning up their remaining energy for; their last required task of the day.

Poe nodded. “Without a hitch.”

“I’ve never been that far to the edge of the station before,” Finn added. “It’s both amazing and terrifying.”

They had been fixing a piece of equipment on one of the solar panels, down on one end of the truss. Ben imagined it might have felt a bit like teetering on the brink of an abyss.

Poe glanced at his watch. “About time for the debrief. You ready?” He asked Finn.

Finn saluted him with an empty packet of coffee, the movement a bit uncoordinated in his exhaustion. “Let’s do it.”


	7. Chapter 7

**_Day Eighty-Seven_ **

“You’re down to your last week,” Ben mused, one evening after dinner, as he and Hux were tidying up the containers from their evening meal. They were alone in Unity; Poe had retired to his sleep station to call home, and Rey was in the Cupola taking photographs. Finn and Phasma had eaten in Zvezda and hadn’t come back into the US segment afterwards. “Sad to leave or ready for solid ground?”

“Mixed,” Hux admitted. “It’ll be nice to be back, see family and friends, sleep in a bed.” Finished disposing of the empty food pouches, he turned to face Ben fully. “I wouldn’t say I’m sad to leave, exactly, but I’m definitely aware that I might never get the chance to come back.”

“Hey, there’s still time,” Ben shrugged. “You never know.”

Hux smirked. “True.”

Truthfully, Ben understood Hux’s point. Between the length of time astronauts typically had to wait between missions, and the sometimes unpredictable nature of space program funding, there were never any guarantees. Hopefully his mother was doing her best to assist with the latter.

“You said once that you’d thought about being an astronaut as a kid.” Ben had finally reached the point of feeling natural in weightlessness and was currently floating mid-module, holding on to nothing, and quite happy about it. “But what made you decide to actually go for it?”

Hux folded his arms across his chest and tipped his head back, considering. “It wasn’t something I’d ever thought about, as an adult. I served in the military, became a test pilot, which I loved. But then ESA started recruiting for astronauts, the first time they’d done so in a long time, and I was the right age, had the right credentials.” His eyes met Ben’s. “So I thought, why the _hell_ not?”

Ben grinned.

Hux shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d make it, it was such a long shot.”

“But here you are,” Ben replied. “And when you land, won’t you hold the record for the most number of days in space of any ESA astronaut?”

“How do you even know that?” The other man questioned, shaking his head in what might have been amusement.

“It’s kind of a big deal,” Ben pointed out. And it was. It was something like 370 total days that Hux would have spent in space, more than any of his ESA colleagues, even those from an earlier cohort. Ben knew he was also only the third ever European commander of the ISS.

“Not compared to your NASA colleagues,” Hux observed. He wasn’t wrong, there were NASA astronauts who’d been in space for twice that time, or more. But still-

“It’s not exactly a fair comparison,” Ben objected. “ESA’s existed for a lot less time and also provides less funding.” Less funding equated to less spacetime for astronauts. “It’s still impressive.”

Hux inclined his head, lips quirking in a tiny smile. Ben wasn’t positive, but it almost looked like his pale cheeks had pinked just a little.

“Would you have stayed in the Navy, if you hadn’t been accepted for astronaut training?”

“Probably, at least for awhile.” Hux agreed. “I might have eventually become a commercial test pilot.”

“So can you fly anything?”

Hux smirked. “I don’t know about _anything_. But certainly a lot of things. I’ve flown at least thirty types of aircraft, both jets and helicopters.”

“Jeez, T-38 training must have been a breeze,” Ben quipped, and Hux laughed. “That’s the only aircraft I’ve ever flown. Well, unless you count my dad letting me take control for five seconds when he took me flying as a kid.”

“Did you fly a lot with your dad growing up?”

Ben shrugged. “Some. He was away a lot, as you can imagine. But he loves to fly; it was definitely something he did to relax on his time off.”

Hux smiled. “I can sympathize. You grew up in Houston?”

Ben nodded. “Yeah. I was actually born in Maryland, my dad was flying at Pax River then. That’s-“

“NAS Patuxent River,” Hux interjected. “I know.”

“Test pilot, right,” Ben grinned. “Of course you would.” The Naval Air Station at Patuxent River was home to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and a naval aviation testing center, among other things. “Poe and Phas both flew there, too. Have you ever been there?”

“I have.”

“I don’t really remember it,” Ben confessed. “We moved when I was less than a year old. We did go back a time or two to visit some of my parents’ friends, but I was pretty young.”

“Did you get to travel at all with your parents for their work?”

Ben considered. “A little. Not too much. I went to all three of my dad’s launches at Kennedy, but that was about it.” He smiled. “The launches were one of the few times I remember being really excited about what he was doing. It seemed really cool, especially to a kid.”

“I imagine it’s not easy to have an astronaut for a parent,” Hux mused. The Brit’s expression was thoughtful, his eyes knowing, and Ben felt a bit like the other man could see right through him. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother him as much as he might have expected.

“It’s not,” Ben agreed. “Even when he wasn’t in space, he was away a lot, or working long hours at JSC. And everyone I met always thought it was so cool that my dad was an astronaut - which, I mean, it was - but people didn’t tend to recognize how hard it could be or that maybe I didn’t want to talk about him all the time.”

Hux smirked. “It’s like being the child of a celebrity.”

Ben chuckled. “Yeah, maybe. You’d think astronauts would be so common in Houston that no one would care, but - surprisingly - that’s not the case.”

“I think people tend to latch on to the glamour of something, without thinking about the reality of it. Like telling me how impressive it was that my father was Commandant at Sandhurst. And I was like, ‘do you _know_ what it’s like to have a father who heads a military academy?’”

“Stern and uncompromising?”

Hux snorted. “To say the least.” He sighed. “He wasn’t the easiest man, nor the kindest. Nothing was ever good enough for him.”

“Did he live to see you become an astronaut?”

“He did. I’m not sure it much mattered to him, though.”

Ben raised an eyebrow. “That can’t be true. To have the kind of career you’ve had - he must have been proud of you.”

Hux stared at Ben for a long moment, long enough for Ben to start to worry that he might have overstepped. Hux wasn’t exactly forthcoming about his past, or emotions, in general. But then a smile flickered over the other man’s features.

“I’d like to think you’re right,” the Brit admitted. “But my father liked things to be done his way. No matter what I accomplished, if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, it was never enough. If he was proud of anything I did, he certainly never made it known.” He was quiet for a moment. “But it hardly matters now. I imagine your parents have at least been a bit more supportive regarding your career choice?”

“Yeah, they have,” Ben agreed. “They’ve always been supportive of me, but they also tend to be critical. Especially my mother. She obviously knows a lot about the work that I do - both engineering and the space program - so she constantly has opinions about things I could be doing differently or better.”

“I take it you’re not terribly receptive to her advice?” The tone was slightly teasing, with a hint of a smile.

“Not usually,” Ben admitted, with a wry grin. “She was absent a lot, too, when I was growing up. She worked crazy hours at NASA - still does. She’d shuffle me off to a relative or leave me on my own and not be there when I needed her, but she had no problem swooping in to tell me how I was falling short in some way. It made me resentful, so then I acted out, which gave her more ammunition for telling me off. It wasn’t the best cycle.”

“I’d imagine not.”

“I guess I was probably a bit of a problem child for awhile. And I’ve always struggled with feeling like I’m not living up to my parents’ expectations.” Ben gave Hux a sheepish look. “And now I’m rambling. Sorry.”

Hux smiled. A genuine smile. “I don’t mind.”

“I don’t even usually talk about this stuff.” Ben shrugged. “And I’m not sure I have the right to complain about my basically supportive, if nosy and demanding, parents, especially with what you’ve said about your dad.”

“It’s fine.” Hux shook his head. “We all have our own baggage, I suppose. And I’ve made my peace with my relationship with my father.”

“What about your mom?” Ben asked, then winced. “Sorry, I’m not trying to pry.”

Hux smirked. “If I don’t want to answer a question, I won’t. Don’t worry.” His smirk softened around the edges. “My mother is wonderful.”

Ben smiled. “Does she still live in the UK?”

Hux nodded. “In London. I try to get over and see her when I can.”

“Did she come to launch?”

“Yes, she did. To both of them.” Hux chuckled. “She said she enjoyed it, but I’m not sure it’s really her favorite activity - watching her only child launch into space on top of a rocket.”

“I bet,” Ben laughed, too. “My dad said watching me launch was more nerve-wracking than doing it himself, and I believe it.”

“Your parents were at your launch?”

“Just my dad,” Ben admitted. “Leia was tied up with work in D.C.”

“The eternal workaholic,” Hux quipped, and Ben could only nod in reply. “I suppose we should be grateful for her efforts.”

Despite his words, Hux’s eyes betrayed something that stuck with Ben long after the conversation had ended. Not pity, he wouldn’t have stood for that. Just sympathy and _knowing_ , which left Ben with the odd feeling that this man he’d known for a mere three months might just understand him better than anyone else.

 

\------------

 

**_Day Ninety-Four_ **

“Houston, everyone.” Hux was speaking into the microphone in his hand, as all six astronauts faced the camera that was streaming the proceedings down to the ground. “Welcome to the change of command ceremony between Expedition 62 and 63. In just a few minutes, I’m going to hand over command of the space station to Poe Dameron,” - he glanced to the astronaut in question, floating just to his left - “but first, I want to take a moment to say a few words.”

From where Ben was floating, just behind Poe, he had a profile view of Hux as he addressed the camera.

“We’ve had an incredibly successful Expedition 62, up here on station. That is largely due to the support of our ground teams in Houston, Huntsville, Munich, Tsukuba and Moscow. From the teams that built the equipment we use, to everyone involved in our training, and of course the flight directors and mission control teams that have supported us day and night while we’ve been on station, none of what we do would be possible without your tireless effort. So thank you.”

Ben nodded in agreement, sharing a brief smile with Phasma, floating across from him.

“I think I can speak for everyone on station,” Hux glanced over his shoulder at the amassed crew. “When I also say a thank you to all of our families and friends, who have supported us through this experience, and helped us remain connected to home when we’re so far away from it.”

That got a murmur of agreement from all present.

“And finally, I want to say particular thanks to these five individuals that I have had the pleasure of living and working with on station.” Hux turned partway, so he could address the group while not completely turning away from the camera. “This mission would not have been a success without your hard work, dedication, and good spirits, and I feel fortunate to count you all as colleagues and as friends. Phasma and Finn, I’ve enjoyed every minute of our mission together and am incredibly proud of everything we’ve achieved. Poe, Ben and Rey, you three have been a great addition to our crew, and I know that you’ll continue to do excellent work in Expedition 63.

Ben smiled. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Hux say so many words all at once, and the sentiments behind them warmed his heart.

“So without further ado,” Hux turned back to Poe. “I now transfer command of the ISS to Poe Dameron, a skilled astronaut and leader with a ridiculous sense of humor. I know the station is in excellent hands.” He offered his own hand to Poe. “She’s all yours, Commander.”

Everyone clapped as Poe and Hux shook hands, then embraced. Then everyone was hugging everyone else, and it wasn’t until they’d settled back into their places that Poe took the microphone.

“Thank you, Hux. It’s an honor to command the station, and I’m very humbled by it.” Poe glanced around at each of them. “We’ve had an amazing Expedition 62, and I think I can speak for my crew when I say that we feel incredibly privileged to have been a part of it.” Ben and Rey nodded their agreement. “Hux, Phasma, and Finn, you have all been so welcoming to us, immediately making us feel like part of the team and helping us adapt to life on station. I know we’ve all learned so much from all three of you. Hux, it’s been a joy and an honor to be a part of your crew.” The other man inclined his head in thanks. “Ben and Rey, I’m so proud to have you both up here with me, and I’m looking forward to what we’ll do on Expedition 63. Thank you all.”

As soon as Poe had finished speaking, the module came alive with voices as nearly everyone began talking at once. Phasma floated over to Poe with a cheer, clapping him on the shoulder in a gesture of congratulations. Behind Ben, Rey and Finn were chatting animatedly and embracing again, no doubt thinking ahead to their separation the following day. Glancing around the small space, Ben’s eyes landed on Hux, who was looking in his direction. The other man offered a smile and a nod, which Ben returned. Yeah, he really wasn’t so ready for this crew to leave, either.

The change of command ceremony had come at the end of the workday and, once finished, the ISS crew turned their attention to dinner. Their last dinner all together.  
****

“Wow, it’s like you get a night off,” Phasma teased Hux, as they all went about preparing their food in the small space of Unity. Just as they had done every Friday night, and a few additional times, for the past three months. It wasn’t a Friday, but three of their number’s last night on station was certainly cause for a group meal.

“Will wonders never cease,” Hux quipped, smirking at the newly-appointed commander. “I’m off duty.”

“At least until you’re in the Falcon,” Poe pointed out, with a chuckle. “So, fifteen hours, give or take.”

As the commander of their Falcon, Hux would be back in charge once his crew was in the small spacecraft. It was his responsibility to ensure they followed all necessary procedures to get them home safely. Ben knew the man; he wouldn’t fully relax until he was back on earth with his obligations to his crew fulfilled. Realistically, other than when eating or sleeping, the Expedition 62 crew’s last hours on station would be fairly busy; Ben wasn’t sure any of them would be doing much relaxing.

“In twenty-four hours, you’ll all be back on earth,” Rey mused, as they gathered around the table. Ben opened his pouch of beef ravioli and took a bite. It had been a busy day, and he was starving.

“I’m looking forward to sleeping in a bed,” Finn told her with a grin.

“Me too,” Phasma agreed. “And taking a shower. Less so not being able to stand unassisted long enough to do so, but you know.”

“It’s a tough adjustment back to earth, isn’t it?” Rey asked. They all knew it would be, they’d been briefed to expect it, but the younger three on their crew didn’t yet know from experience.

“Yeah,” Phasma nodded. “I mean, worth it, of course. But gravity is hard to get used to after-” She waved a hand around. “-this”.

“Well, we’re going to miss you three up here,” Poe said, offering them each a smile. “It’ll be strange without you.”

“You’ll have a new crew in, what, ten days time?” Hux pointed out. “And then you’ll be the ones entertained by watching your new crew members learn how to move in microgravity.”

“Yeah, I knew you three were laughing at us,” Ben grumbled good-naturedly. Hux’s returning smirk gave him all the answer he needed.

It seemed a given that the best thing to do during your last night on station was anything and everything that wasn’t possible on earth. Finn and Rey were playing with a floating ball of water, gently batting it back and forth with something like ping pong paddles. Rey eventually swapped places with Poe in favor of taking pictures; weightless water, apparently, made for very cool shots. It devolved quickly into a hilarious game of Poe and Finn batting the water in her direction, Rey desperately trying to get a good picture while keeping the camera dry, and someone hurriedly soaking up the escaping water ball with a towel before it made a mess in any other equipment.

Meanwhile, Phasma had convinced Ben to spin her head over heels to see whether or not she’d get dizzy.

“Aren’t you going to be dizzy enough tomorrow?” He quipped, and she just laughed. Admittedly, somersaulting in mid air was pretty thrilling, and before long he’d joined in.

Rey had even managed to get Hux involved in their strange ping pong game, and they were all cheering and laughing when Poe proposed celebratory hot chocolate.

A good way to end their last night together.

 

\------------

 

The morning of the Expedition 62 crew’s departure was completely normal, for Ben, except for the knowledge that his three crewmates were making their final preparations for leaving. While he tended to his docket of maintenance and experiments, they were cleaning out their sleep stations, packing up their personal items and disposing of anything they didn’t need to take home. They did their final rounds on any of their ongoing experiments and then reviewed their Falcon checklists, ensuring that everything was set for the quickly approaching departure.

There was a built in break in Ben’s activities to see his crewmates off, not that he needed the helpful reminder that popped up in his to-do list.

He found Hux, Phasma, and Finn in Unity, affixing their Expedition 62 patch to the wall, adding yet another to the long line that stretched all the way back to Ben’s father’s own expedition, nineteen years earlier, and then even a bit further. They followed up that symbolic moment with the much more practical one of downing anti-nausea meds and some fluids, both of which would help them feel at least a bit less terrible when they arrived back on earth.

They all made their way into the Russian segment, single-file, where the soon-to-be departing Falcon was docked to Poisk. Ben was reminded of his very first night on station, when they’d emerged from Rassvet in a similar fashion; how time had flown.

In the crowded airlock, they said their goodbyes. This time it was Rey, instead of Finn, with the camera, capturing the moment.

“It’s been a pleasure, man,” Finn told Ben, giving the larger man a hug, which Ben returned. “Look after Rey for me, yeah? Not that she needs it.”

Ben smiled. “Of course. And likewise. Safe travels.”

Phasma was next, throwing her arms around him tightly. “I’m going to miss you, Kylo,” she told him. “Stay out of trouble up here, okay?”

Ben chuckled. “I’ll do my best. You, too. Give everyone at JSC a shout for me.”

She grinned. “Absolutely.”

She slipped past him, ducking around Finn to pull herself into the Falcon. She flew the same position as Ben, pilot or left-seater, which meant she entered first.

Hux was upon him then, offering a hand. Ben shook it and then tugged the other man into a hug.

“Safe flight,” Ben said, when they’d separated. “It’s been a pleasure, Hux.”

“You too, Ben.” Hux’s smile was warm. “Best of luck with 63.”

“Thanks.”

“Perhaps I’ll see you earth-side sometime.”

Ben grinned. “I’ll look forward to it.”

The redhead followed his two colleagues into the Falcon, Ben hovering near the hatch as he watched them get situated. Poe and Rey were just behind him, on com with Mission Control.

“Copy that, Houston.” Poe said. “Ben, all clear to close the hatch.”

“We’re all set on this side,” Ben told Hux, who was still only feet away from him, preparing to close the Falcon’s hatch from the inside.

“We’re good to go,” Hux affirmed, then quipped: “See you around.”

“BYE!” Phasma shouted from further down in the spacecraft.

Ben chuckled, even as he reached up to pull the hatch closed, Hux doing the same inside the Falcon. The heavy door slid shut and sealed, cutting Ben, Poe and Rey off from their departing crewmates.

 

\------------

 

It was approximately two hours later that the Falcon actually departed. During that time, the pressure in the spacecraft had been carefully checked to make sure it was holding, and the crew had donned spacesuits and reviewed the reentry procedures once again. Ben didn’t have any specific responsibilities related to their departure, so he had returned to his regular tasks as scheduled; principally, tending to a couple of ongoing experiments in Kibo, the Japanese lab. He was thankful that his work today didn’t involve placing or retrieving any experiments from the outside of the station, made possible by the small airlock in that module. It was undeniably cool, but required considerable focus, which he was rather in short supply of with his now-close friends clinging to the outside of the station in a tiny spacecraft that would soon be flinging them back to earth. Perhaps whoever had organized his schedule back at Mission Control had anticipated that fact. In any case, Ben had done his best with the work at hand.

Now he was gathered with Rey and Poe, listening to the communications between the Falcon and Mission Control. Hux had just executed the command to undock; it took about three minutes for the catches that held the Falcon to the ISS to fully release. From the window in front of him, Ben could just see the spacecraft, and now he was waiting to see it begin to move. He could imagine the three of them in their spacesuits in the cozy capsule: Hux in the center, in the commander’s seat, Phasma, to his left, and Finn, on his opposite side. All carefully focused, preparing themselves for the intense few hours that awaited, and looking forward to returning home.

And there it was. Slowly, the Falcon began to move down and away.

“Undocking confirmed,” came the voice of the Capcom at Mission Control.

“Farewell, Station.” That was Hux, as the capsule drifted further away from the ISS. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“Likewise.” Poe, speaking into the com, communicated what they were all feeling. Ben was actually glad he didn’t have to say anything, as he was caught up in a tangle of emotion: sadness, nostalgia, nerves, and elation over the wonderful months their two crews had shared. 

“Godspeed, Commander.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I promised Kylux, and now there's one chapter left, and there hasn't been any actual Kylux. Clearly this means there has to be a sequel! It was evident to me pretty early on that this story would need more than one part, and I'm happy to share that the sequel is well underway. It's called Rocket Science, is set approximately one year after this fic, and I should be ready to start posting it not long after this one finishes. So stay tuned for the continued adventures of Astro-Ben and Astro-Hux.
> 
>  
> 
> The very first thing I did for this fic was work out career backstories for all of the main characters. I'm not sure that anyone else cares about the professional credentials of our favorite Star Wars astronauts, but I've included an abbreviated version below in case anyone is curious. Smart bunch, these guys...
> 
> Armitage Hux (Lt. Commander, Royal Navy, Ret.) was born in May 1977 in Surrey, England. He served as a pilot in the Royal Navy, including deployments to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, before attending the Empire Test Pilot School. At the time of his selection for astronaut training, he was a test pilot on the Fast Jet Test Squadron at Boscombe Down. Hux holds a BSc in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Liverpool and an MSc in Flight Dynamics from Cranfield University.
> 
> Schuyler Phasma (Captain, U.S. Army) was born in March 1977 in Reno, Nevada. She served as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, completing one tour in Iraq. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 2009, shortly before joining NASA. Phasma received her BSc in Physics from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and her MSc in Physics from Imperial College London.
> 
> Finn Eightseven was born in September 1983 in Wiltshire, England. Prior to joining ESA, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Eightseven received his BSc in Geology from the University of Edinburgh. He completed his postgraduate work at University College London, receiving his MSc in Geoscience and his PhD in Earth Sciences.
> 
> Poe Dameron (Commander, U.S. Navy) was born in January 1975 in Tacoma, Washington. Commissioned through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), he flew in a fighter squadron for the U.S. Navy and served two tours in the Middle East. He attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and was then assigned as a test pilot at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. Dameron received his BSc from the University of Washington and his MSc from Johns Hopkins University, both in Mechanical Engineering.
> 
> Ben Solo was born in November 1983 in Lexington Park, Maryland, but considers his home to be Houston, Texas. At the time of his selection for astronaut training, he was a Technologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. Solo holds a BSc in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology.
> 
> Rey Kenobi was born in July 1984 in London, England, but considers her home to be in Var, France. Prior to her selection for astronaut training, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre national d’etudes spatiales (CNES), the French space agency. Kenobi received her Bachelor of Physics degree from University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, followed by her Master of Advanced Studies in Astrophysics and her PhD in Astrophysics, both from the University of Cambridge.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter! Thanks to everyone who has come along on this space journey. It's been so fun to write, and I appreciate all of the kind comments. I'm working on the sequel now and hope to begin posting it soon!

**_Epilogue:_ ** **_Day One Hundred Seventy-Nine_ **

Returning to earth took three and a half hours. It was kind of amazing, that, after six and a half years of training, six and a half hours of launch, and six months on the ISS. In comparison, the trip home was shockingly short.

Admittedly, it was the most intense three and a half hours of Ben’s life.

Even the normally stoic Hux had confessed, in a conversation a few days before his own return to earth, to it being the most thrilling ride he’d ever experienced. And this from a man who’d made a prior career out of landing fighter jets on aircraft carriers and deliberately spinning all manner of planes and helicopters out of control. The Expedition 62 crew had landed without a hitch, though Ben, Poe and Rey hadn’t heard anything from their colleagues once they’d returned to earth. But that was to be expected. Hux, Phasma and Finn had undoubtedly spent the intervening months doing physical rehabilitation and mission debriefing, and they wouldn’t be assigned to serve as Capcom, or its Eurocom counterpart, so soon after returning from space. Ben hoped he’d have a chance to see them all soon once he, too, was back on earth.

The now-prime crew for Expedition 64 had been a great addition to the team, when they’d arrived ten days or so after Hux’s crew’s departure, and Ben had enjoyed getting to know and working with all of them. But he’d missed Phasma’s infectious laughter, and Finn’s cheerful nature, and… Hux. He’d missed the other man’s dry humor, his often-present smirk, his precise nature, and his utter reliability. He’d missed their long conversations and the strangely reassuring calm he felt in the Brit’s presence. Poe had been a fantastic commander - Ben had not a single complaint - but he’d definitely noticed Hux’s absence.

Ben’s last few days on the ISS had been a whirlwind. He, Poe, and Rey had tried on their spacesuits and powered up the Falcon to ensure everything still worked as expected. Ben had assisted Poe in packing their capsule, which was a monstrous task in and of itself; the weight distribution had to be precise, as it impacted reentry. Among other things, they’d be carrying back to earth some of the experimental data they’d all collected over the past six months. They’d done their practice reentry sim and organized what few things they’d be taking home. There was no laundry on station; astronauts just wore their clothes until they wore out. The discarded clothes were eventually packed on a spacecraft designed to burn up in the atmosphere, so Ben didn’t have to worry about bringing any of it back with him. Finally, they’d added their Expedition 63 crew patch to the wall, just next to Expedition 62’s.

They were going home.

They’d been in the capsule for more than four hours now, the first two still docked to the station, completing pressure checks. For the latter two, since the Falcon had undocked, they’d been coasting, still on orbit. They’d all donned their spacesuits before departing, a task a bit trickier to manage when doing it by yourself.

“You guys ready for this?” Poe asked, glancing between them from his middle seat. The clock indicated that their deorbit burn - the start of the fun stuff - was only minutes away. It was all automated; it wasn’t as if they had a choice.

Rey lifted her hand in what might have been a salute. “Yes, sir!”

Ben grinned. “Let’s do this.”

The Capcom’s voice crackled over Ben’s headset. “Standby for deorbit burn.”

The engines fired right on cue. Technically, they were now flying backwards, the engines actually slowing the spacecraft so that it could reenter the atmosphere. The deorbit burn was critical, precisely calculated to ensure they entered the atmosphere at the correct angle, and Ben had felt a flare of relief at the sound of the engines lighting up. He was being pressed back into his seat from the deceleration. It wasn’t nearly as intense as the pressure he’d experienced during launch, but he knew it was only the beginning.

The engines cut off, just as precisely, after four minutes and thirty-one seconds.

And approximately twenty-five minutes after that, the service and habitation modules were jettisoned via a series of loud explosions right next to Ben’s head. He was grateful he’d been warned; otherwise, he might have thought something was seriously wrong. The explosions were followed by a big jolt, and Ben glanced to the window to see earth disconcertingly tumbling by. They were quite literally going head over heels.

“Service and orbital modules jettisoned.” Ben appreciated Poe’s running narration. It was intended for those on the ground, but it was also reassuring him that everything was happening as expected.

The speed was much more noticeable now, as was the atmospheric drag against the capsule.

“Capsule stabilized. Heat shield first.”

And the need for the heat shield was increasingly evident, as the temperature and humidity in the spacecraft rose. Ben was sweating in his spacesuit. Glancing at the window, he realized it was now black and impossible to see through, charred over from the searing heat outside.

“Three g.”

That was Poe, confirming the g-force they were now experiencing. There was an expected radio blackout, so Mission Control couldn’t currently hear him, but he maintained his narration all the same. Ben was certainly feeling the g-loading. It had been building slowly, but was now an awful, inescapable force after the weightlessness he’d become accustomed to. They’d experienced up to 8g in training, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle that now. He was taking small breaths, the heavy weight on his chest making air intake difficult.

“Four g. Crew in good condition.”

Ben took another shallow breath, forcing his leaden arms into motion to tighten the straps on his harness while the g-force was flattening him into his seat. He’d need that for what was coming next. The g-loading started to ease off then, and he internally sighed with relief.

Suddenly, a jolt, and the capsule spun and shook violently. “Drogue chutes open.” Poe’s voice was a bit distorted by the motion of the spacecraft. Another jolt. “Main chute open.”

And then suddenly - abruptly -, the Falcon stabilized, hanging underneath the parachute.

“Heat shield jettisoned.”

As the shield peeled away from the capsule, Ben could once again see out the window. _Blue_ sky. He was jolted from this thought by his seat suddenly slamming upwards, rising to the top level of its shock absorbers. As they continued their descent beneath the parachute, Ben glanced around the Falcon, making sure everything was securely stowed for impact.

“Eight hundred feet.”

They were close now, and Ben adopted the brace position: arms folded across his chest, neck pushed back into his seat, teeth lightly clenched so that he wouldn’t bite his tongue.

“Three hundred feet.”

And then they hit the water.

 

\------------

 

Ben felt sick. He had just been decamped from the Falcon, now sitting on the deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier, into a chair. Even that amount of movement had his head spinning.

The water landing had been intense, just as he’d been warned it would be. It felt a bit like how Ben imagined a car crash would. Then they’d been stuck inside the warm capsule for the better part of an hour, while the recovery crew hoisted it - and them - onto the ship’s deck. Weakened from the effects of six months in microgravity, not to mention general exhaustion, the astronauts were unable to open the hatch or get out of the Falcon themselves. Ben had been lifted out last.

He was still in his spacesuit, but someone had removed his helmet. Ben was grateful; the fresh air felt amazing after so long without, although the early morning sun seemed unusually bright to his slowly readjusting eyes. A nurse had covered him with a blanket and mopped his sweaty face. She now hovered by his shoulder, monitoring him to ensure he was okay. He was, he supposed; more or less.

There was a lot of commotion on the deck, and it was rather overwhelming after six months spent with only five other people. There were Navy personnel, pararescue teams, medical staff, a contingent from NASA, and even some press. A crowd surrounded the Falcon, getting it secured for transport. Another crowd surrounded the three astronauts, the press finally being allowed to approach for a few brief questions.

Ben answered as best he could, trying to ignore the spinning in his head and the aches in his body. He glanced to Poe and Rey, seated a few feet over. They both looked a bit better than he felt, but Ben suspected they probably felt worse than they appeared. Upon first getting out of the Falcon, he’d idly noted that the Navy personnel had addressed Poe as Commander. That was his title for this expedition, of course, but he now recalled that it was also Poe’s rank in the Navy.

He was relieved when the press stepped away and were replaced by a team that lifted him clear off the ground, chair and all. Ben wasn’t exactly a small guy, so he was mildly surprised, but equally grateful that he didn’t have to walk. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he could. They took him via elevator to what he could only assume was the ship’s infirmary.

It was just in time, too. He’d no sooner been transferred to a bed then the nausea hit, and his nurse materialized with a bucket just in time for him to throw up. _Perfect_. So much for the anti-nausea meds that Poe and Hux had both promised him he’d need, although he could only imagine how much worse he’d feel if he hadn’t taken them. The medical team helped him out of his spacesuit, pausing periodically for him to ride out another wave of nausea. He was incredibly dizzy, and his entire body was heavy and sore. He couldn’t see Poe and Rey from where he was, but he knew they were nearby; from the sounds, he thought they were suffering from the same symptoms.

It was a relief to get into a clean blue flight suit. He was sweaty from the heat of re-entry and his body’s reaction to its return to earth, and the spacesuit had felt even more bulky and restrictive than usual. It was also a relief to be fully lying down, as the medical team checked him over and put in an IV for fluids.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been when the throwing up finally subsided, and his nurse smiled down at him.

“Just rest,” she said, wiping his forehead. “You have a few hours to sleep before we dock.”

Ben nodded blearily. He wasn’t actually sure what time it was; late afternoon station time, he thought, and still morning in the Pacific time zone they were currently in. But never mind that it wasn’t nighttime, he felt like he could sleep for a week.

Ben closed his eyes and was out in moments.

 

\------------

 

He felt considerably better when he was gently woken some time later, although his body was still demanding further rest. He carefully sat up with the help of his nurse and a doctor, who enquired how he was feeling.

“Better,” he said, his voice a little rough. “Still a bit achy and my head is heavy. And I’m a little bit queasy still, but much better than before.”

“More rest will help,” the doctor told him. “And time. But first, we have to get you back to Houston.”

Ben sighed. He still had a long day ahead, he knew. “What time is it?”

“Just past 13:30, local time. You’ve been asleep for about four hours.”

He had about a half hour to wake up and feel as much like himself as was possible, and then some of the NASA team came to get them for the press conference. Answering questions for reporters was about the last thing Ben wanted to do while feeling so awful, but it was a part of the job. At least they could sit down for it. They made a funny sight - he, Poe and Rey - waddling awkwardly through the corridors of the ship. Walking was a definite challenge after six months of floating.

The press conference passed in a blur, as did disembarking from the aircraft carrier, once it had docked in San Diego at three in the afternoon. Ben was distantly happy to be in California, of which he had very fond memories, but too exhausted to summon up any proper emotions. They wouldn’t be here for very long, anyway. The port was a Naval Air Station, and they were driven a short distance to where two planes awaited them. The NASA G3 jet that would take Ben and Poe to Houston, and an ESA jet for Rey.

Which meant they had to say goodbye.

It was weird to part ways with his crewmate, after six months of living together full-time, and a long period of training before that. He wished he was a bit more with it to say a proper goodbye, or that they had a bit more time to do it, but they had to make do with a hug and a see-you-soon. Which they would, actually, as they’d be debriefing together in only a few weeks time.

The plane had beds, thank heavens, and he and Poe wasted no time in laying down once again. His body felt the least terrible when he was horizontal. They had medical staff here, too, who insisted on taking blood samples before letting them rest. He was vaguely aware of the plane taking off, as he fell back into sleep.

The flight back to Houston was far too short and, when Ben was roused for landing, he was disoriented and groggy. It might have been okay if he was able to disembark straight into bed, but he had to survive a meet-and-greet and an extensive medical exam before he’d be able to sleep again. The jet-lag wasn’t helping matters; while only just past eight-thirty in Houston, it was approaching two in the morning, station time. It made him feel marginally better that Poe looked every bit as out of it as Ben felt, and the other man had been through this before.

As he emerged into the night air to an enthusiastic cheer, carefully following Poe down the aircraft’s steps, Ben had to remind himself exactly where he was. Back in Houston, back on earth. For all that gravity was very insistently telling him otherwise, Ben felt that he might as well have still been in space, floating adrift and uncertain which way was up.

He was surprised to see Leia on the tarmac. He’d expected Han, but he’d assumed his mother would be unable to get away from her duties in Washington, even for something as monumental as her only son returning from space. The fact that she’d come down for their arrival made him feel unexpectedly warm. His eyes caught a flash of red amongst the small crowd, and Ben blinked, sure he was seeing things. It couldn’t be.

Han reached him then, engulfing him in a bear hug.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Ben.” Han pulled back, smiling at him. “It’s great to have you back. Your mother and I are so proud of you.”

That meant more than Ben would ever admit. “Thanks, Dad.”

Han stepped aside as a couple of JSC officials approached, and Ben accepted handshakes, hugs and congratulations from his colleagues. Seeing that his mother was currently talking to Poe, he scanned the small crowd, feeling a slight flutter in his stomach. Or maybe that was just the nausea. When their eyes met, Hux strolled over, which Ben appreciated. Walking was a rather complicated ordeal at the moment.

“What are you doing here?” Ben asked, sure his surprise was evident in his voice.

“I’ve been at JSC for a few days for some final debriefing,” Hux answered, offering his trademark smirk. He was wearing a button-down, the top button undone, and a sport jacket. Ben found it strange to see him in something other than a flightsuit or the polos he’d lived in on the ISS. Standing face to face, he could now tell that Hux was, in fact, nearly his height, at most an inch shorter. “Thought I might as well join your welcome party.” Hux offered his hand, and Ben shook it.

“It’s good to see you,” Ben said truthfully.

“You too, Ben.” Hux eyed him appraisingly. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, great,” Ben quipped. “You know, other than the nausea and the sensation of being slowly crushed into the earth.”

Hux laughed. “Sounds about right. When you get your gravity back, I’ll buy you a beer.”

Ben smiled. “I might hold you to that.”

Leia was on him then, and Hux stepped away so that Ben could have a moment with his mother. She hugged him warmly, asking how he felt and telling him how much she’d missed him. Ben hugged her back, genuinely happy to see her. Over the top of Leia’s head, he met Hux’s eyes again, and the other man smiled. That open, relaxed, rare smile that actually made Ben’s heart skip a beat. And suddenly, the spinning in his head eased off and Ben knew, without a shred of doubt, exactly where he was.

He was home.


End file.
